burnt out on politics and the Trump drama. A quiet musical interlude serves to take us away a bit. To a time when we could enjoy life. I'd certainly be disappointed and angry if entertainers in that setting ruined my evening with more talk of politics. A raucous rock concert yes, but not that.

If I were at a restaurant, jazz band or no band at all, the last thing I would want is for a political speech between the salad and the soup.

Then... let's say a band -- -better yet, all bands, decide to give speeches at the bars and restaurants that hire them, how would the owner decide which bands to hire.

N.J. -- a band was hired to perform at a Red Bank bar. The bank covers Springsteen. A week before their gig, the owner cancelled their gig because his patrons wouldn't put up with "Springsteen's bullshit." This was reported in the Newark Star-Ledger and here, on D.U.


and adding --- there have been several people on D.U. who have experienced overload about the shit that Trump comes up with on a daily basis. I have posted and messaged them to suggest that maybe take a break from the stress by not reading or watching the news. Things aren't going to bet better or worse because I stop following what is going on. Non-political "safe spaces" are sometimes needed.

should be relaxing. Once you're aware, "woke," it's difficult to turn that awareness off. And it's hard to be around people who seem to ignore the destruction of our democratic norms.

When I go out to dinner or a concert, the very last thing in the world I want to hear is discussions of politics. I want to enjoy myself and get lost in the moment. If its a concert, I am paying the ticket price to hear the band perform songs I enjoy, not hear their opinions (on anything, to be fair). I don't care about the politics of performers, or what foods they like, or what color underwear they are wearing -- they are being paid to perform. Dinner out with friends has often included friendly banter about all manner of subjects, sometimes including politics, but not always.

Also, I've lived decades upon decades on this earth, through all manner of "commies" and "nazis" and "fascists" and "kooks" and "warmongers" and "corruption" and "evil" and "danger" and "pandemics" and all the other words that spur emotion and get clicks and views, and yet my life is better now than it has ever been, ever. I find that its all about perspective. I enjoy my family, my friends, the outdoors, and my hobbies as frequently as possible -- that is to say, daily. And I ignore all of the noise and the stuff I can't control (everything except my diet and my own mental and physical health, which I control 99% successfully). What I can't control, I *can* influence, and that's the relationships with friends and family.

I don't watch TV, I don't read corporate media unless its science news or related to a VERY narrow band of topics I like (and none of it is American news). I don't use social media. I don't really give attention to what is going on in THE world, I give attention to what is going on in MY world, with my family and me. That perspective helps me filter out the noise from what's important. And nothing else is really important except the health and well-being of my family and friends. Sometimes politics relates to some of those topics. But rarely.

OK we get it

Must be nice to live in a bubble with no interest in the "outer" world. How cushy is that.

Why are you here then? This is a political forum in a political leaning website. Shouldn't you be having an allergic reaction by now? Or is it just fun to pomp and poke?

and I can't do that unless my own health is taken care of first. Want me to apologize or feel bad? Sorry, no can do.

Do you not prioritize those closest to you?

or apologize (for what?) But I do wonder why you'd be here chatting in a political forum if you don't care what goes on in the world beyond your little sphere. It seems like a contradiction. Unless you enjoy jousting with those whose level of interest in the wider sphere is very different from yours. Why not just go do more fun stuff? Why be here?

Your words:
"I don't really give attention to what is going on in THE world, I give attention to what is going on in MY world, with my family and me. "

And I've posted numerous times in replies to the "woe is me the world is ending" types of posts that I depart from DU (and the internet in general) at regular intervals in order to re-center myself and get away from the toxic soup of the chronically-online. Seems like maybe its about that time again.

yes indeed

No matter how much orange and company have done, are doing, to destroy our world, they have not yet completely succeeded. Despite all their horrific efforts, there are still moments of joy, of fun, of beauty. And every single one of those moments is a victory to be celebrated, not despaired.

also, life is much easier if all you think about is your own world

Been there, done that. Bringing politics unasked into your performance is a great way to be sure you spend all your evenings at home. Because nobody will hire you and you will be too broke to go out.

The rules of performance are VERY strict, and mn9driver is absolutely right about not bringing politics into the performance.

Blinders being worn all day.

As was making fun of the one “Republican” in our office. It got to the point where she kept on denying that she was a Republican. We found out she was for sure when she posted on a site about our company that we were biased against Republicans. Sorry, but if you make it through college and grad school in social work and are still a Republican, there is something wrong with you. She used to screw with me too, manipulating me into doing things that were her job and then bragging and laughing about it, I found out later.

Systems are crumbling – but daily life continues. The dissonance is real

If everything feels broken but strangely normal, the Soviet-era concept of hypernormalization can help

by Adrienne Matei
The Guardian, May 22, 2025

Excerpt...

First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening.

The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation.

Snip...

The effects of hypernormalization

Confronting systemic collapse can be so disorienting, overwhelming and even humiliating, that many tune it out or find themselves in a state of freeze.

Greguski likens this feeling to sleep paralysis: “basically a waking nightmare where you’re like: ‘I’m here, I’m aware, but I’m so scared and I can’t move.’”

In his 1955 book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45, journalist Milton Mayer described a similar state of freeze in German citizens during the rise of the Nazi party: “You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? – Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.”

“People don’t shut down because they don’t feel anything,” says Hickman. “They shut down because they feel too much.” Understanding this overwhelm is an important first step in resisting inaction – it helps us see fear as a trap.

Continues...

https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/ng-interactive/2025/may/22/hypernormalization-dysfunction-status-quo

The image at the top is a detail from "The Life Line", an 1884 oil on canvas painting by Winslow Homer. The masterpiece is part of the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To me, it says "We must keep trying our best."

OP: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220349864

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

-- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As someone said, "The perfect musical for our time".

We saw it several years ago at our local Cygnet Theatre, an excellent production.

...a non-fiction account of the first US ambassador to Hitler's Germany, cites a similar social climate in Germany after Hitler's takeover. There was much gaiety and fun in Hitler's early days--at least for the folks who weren't being directly affected by his orders--much like it is here at the moment. As long as you're not one of the ones being snatched off the street and detained, life looks pretty good. Until it doesn't... tick-tock...

I couldn’t shake it off. Sometimes I wish I had on blinders like so many others. Blind but happy. That’s not me.

fretting, too! .

And they could be looking at you there, and thinking the same thing about you!

Just like losing a loved one. You have to let go of the sorrow and not suffocate yourself constantly. Going out to eat or whatever to escape and breathe or doing another activity, is crucial for your mental well being.

Having what's called a coping mechanism is a vital part of a healthy existence.

I have plenty of coping mechanisms: exercise, daily hikes and walks, meditation, cooking, drawing and gardening, my relationship with my immediate family. All of these things help me cope. That being said, the ugly reality of our present situation often breaks through and I can’t control when that happens, like last night.

I wish I could help someway.

take a two week vacation for *all* media, chats, and forums and see how you feel.

But that means avoiding hearing "Trump admin did such and such.."

I liked listening to financial news but now it's all "Trump and his tariff"

He takes up all the oxygen

They have their billion-dollar empires. And thank goodness for that! Most of the bands you see and hear in your local venues are hardly being paid enough to even be there. They do not have the luxury of alienating venue owners or fans if they want to keep playing music. We all have to find the right path for resistance in our own life.

For a lot of us that play music in small bands, it is what keeps us sane in this world of insanity. And for a lot of people who don't, listening to some music on a nice evening out is what keeps them sane. Music has magical properties IMO. And so often it is the one thing we have in common. It has the ability to bring us together and have conversations that may not ever occur otherwise.

Please give your local artists some grace--and the benefit of the doubt.

Everything these criminals in our govt are doing will affect us for generations.

Good luck.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

― Frank Herbert

Which is in our face.

...to risk alienating customers & venue owners?
Seems like an awfully big expectation.

... it hits them hard in the pocket.

Consumer spends is down more than estimated... Don't see 2q being better...

worrying about politics and Trump's shitstorm - I do plenty of that as it is. So maybe I'd like to do something that lets my brain rest - go to a concert, or be in a concert, or do art. Enjoy some beauty. The fact that musicians are playing a gig and not making speeches doesn't mean they aren't aware; maybe they, too, want to get away for a bit and just offer people something to enjoy. "Life is a shipwreck, but we must remember to sing in the lifeboats."

instead of a restaurant with a jazz band. Everyone doesn’t think like you nor do they have the same level of outrage as you. That’s just playing a purity game that’s unfair to fellow human beings.

If people behaved this way, we would lose even more elections. We cannot afford this sort of indulgence right now.

I vote Democratic every single election without fail. If my server came up to me with "Did you hear about the latest articles from Meidas Touch?" I'd be halfway out the restaurant before that sentence got finished.

People know what's going on in this country. If not the details, they certainly know the contours. No amount of hectoring is going to magically change their minds, like the end of an 80s movie where someone takes a stand on stage and the skeptical audience begins a slow clap.

I feel like I should change my signature because I say it so often. "Has anyone ever actually met other people?"

What people need to accept as a reality is that people do know what's going on. And they approve. After the past four months, Trump is still at 45% right now.

They know.

Treating everyone as ignorati who are desperately waiting to be touched by our personal enlightenment is exactly the kind of posture that turns people away.

I'm there to relax and enjoy dinner with friends and family.

Would it be appropriate for you to stand on your desk and address your entire office about the danger of Trump, or send out a company-wide email with a similar concern?

Would you have a job after you did that?

I don't think you should expect someone else to do what you might not do yourself.

Nixon was in office, and we couldn’t wait for him not to be. But the people in the restaurants just wanted to hear me (or “us,” if there were two or more of us) play, not interrupt their own dinner conversations to impose upon them whatever I had on my mind. This was the same, whether I was playing solo in a fancy French restaurant or as half of a Balkan/Russian duet in a Middle Eastern place run by Iranian Assyrians. In that last place, I was the one who got enlightened. The last time I had heard of Assyrians was in grade school ancient history. I thought they had died out with Ashurbannipal two thousand years ago. I never imagined I’d be hired by his descendants two thousand years later to play Kiša Pada in their night spot in Philadelphia!

Stone relief sculptures- Art History.

Like the Kurds, they have no country of their own, but they have communities spread out over Iran, Iraq, Syria, etc. There are communities of them in North America, too. Not only Philadelphia. I met some in Denver, too. The ones in Denver were surprised to meet an Anglo who knew who they were. Philly has several colleges and universities, so the Assyrians there weren’t quite as surprised to run into someone who knew who they were. I was more surprised than they were!

The husband of my Swedish professor worked in the University Museum, as he was one of the few who could read and translate Sumerian and Babylonian clay cuneiform tablets. To him, the Assyrians were the new kids on the block! Give him the hanging gardens of Babylon over some new-fangled Ziggurat any day He took his wife’s work very seriously, though, and would only speak to me in Swedish, even though his English was nearly perfect.

My Swedish professor was the best language instructor I ever had. Of all the languages I began studying from scratch while in the States, Swedish was the only one that I could comfortably speak with natives after just one year of three times a week classes. The rest (French, Spanish, Russian and German) required longer periods of study—for me, anyway. I learned Catalan, Italian and Dutch on location over here, so it was a different path of learning in each case.

beautiful cylinder stone seals, and their clay reliefs.

Seems like even if you had to take your time, you have a gift for languages.
.

I travel a LOT for my job, and just can’t be bothered to take the time to get a translator for everything. Plus, it would be both arrogant and selfish of me to travel to these people’s countries several times a month and NOT learn their languages. How well would a guy from Amsterdam be received in Boston if he walked into stores, restaurants and business meetings speaking only Dutch, and expecting everyone else to do the same?

I know, I know, with English, it’s different, etc. But still, it’s their country and their language. Who am I to insist that they use mine?

And some people have a better knack for learning languages than others, as well.

That would apply in my case, but exposure and a little intellectual curiosity go a long way, too. When I lived in Spain, I lived in Barcelona with a Catalan family. It was during the end of the fascist era, and Catalan was not permitted in the schools. So, of course, I was determined to learn Catalan. By the time a year had gone by, people in other parts of Spain told me that my Castilian (i.e. “Spanish” ) had a Catalan accent. Barcelona natives thought I was from Mallorca, where Catalan is also spoken, but with a different accent from the mainland.

I often get sorta-compliments over here. In the Netherlands, I have been told that my accent was good, but they could still hear that I was from South Africa (a place I have never been). In Sweden, I have been told that I haven’t quite lost my Norwegian accent. In Russia, I got some wild stares. My Russian was strictly from literature, mostly 19th century. I had never been to the Soviet Union, knew no modern slang whatsoever. It was like landing in New York and speaking Victorian English. Some Russians asked if I had a nice sleep for the past 100 years. My son in law, who was born there, tells me I’m a hopeless verbal anachronism. Oh, well, I can’t get everything right. At least the French, the Germans and the Swiss accept me as a native frequently enough to not give me complete inferiority complexes. In the States, Latinos vome from do many different places, I just keep my Spain accent, and they accept me as a “peninsular,” a European Spaniard.

South Africa?! Hahahahaha!

Oh, your Russian speaking- that's hilarious!
And also being someone with initiative.

Back in '66 - '67 when I was in JHS in NYC my school was only one of four that taught Russian, along with the standard French and Spanish. We had had a French teacher in our gifted 5th & 6th grades. But I didn't like her, so I didn't want to take French; which was too bad bc I ended up visiting Paris decades later during a gifted vacation to my relatives in a small westerm Swiss village. My uncle said he still spoke French with an American accent. Ha, I couldn't tell!

I had no interest in Spanish. So Russian it was. I also thought (though I didn't quite yet know about the bad feelings between Ukrainians and Soviet Russians) it'd interesting to talk to my 1st Gen Ukrainian-American dad in Russian bc I did know they were similar. He talked to his dad in Ukrainian.

I did quite well! Got an 85, and as you well know a totally different alphabet, and m, f, and n. Unfortunately, while my local HS had it, the specialized Music and Art HS I was going to didn't. Thus I slogged through Spanish. I think my Spanish spoke with a ?Castillan accent? The "th"?

the weekends, maaaybe Monday, too.
Then I return.

I found by late March or so, my face was hurting from the tension of anxiety. By mid April I made this weekly mental health break.

In fact I'm still here later than usual.

A concert is a setting where the musical performance comes first and foremost. In what you describe, The food and social scene took precedence over the music, which negates the musicians' skill by marginalizing them to being aural wallpaper.

Unless they ceased food service during the performance, that was just another night at an eatery. The establishment owner likely wouldn't dig it if the crowd camped out at the tables for hours, just ordering occasional drinks and maybe one or two dishes. That is usually why jazz clubs have cover charges and drink minimums.

going on is called a "casual" -- it's not demeaning to the musicians because we already know it's that kind of gig. But you're totally correct, technically what was described in the post was not a concert.

The most outrageous casual I ever played was for Oprah Winfrey's 50th birthday party dinner -- the party that cost $5,000,000. The guests ate dinner and chatted and we played -- right in the middle of all the activity. Right across from Oprah and Stedman, Schwarzeneggar and Maria, Tom Hanks having a very animated conversation with Selma Hayak, v-- and, btw, Diane Sawyer was VASTLY more beautiful in person than on tv. Somehow I can't imagine someone in the band piping up and talking about politics.

I realize the players know the parameters when they take the gig. It largely irks me because I think jazz players are overlooked as is. Whenever I am in a room with a live jazz artist, I feel rude if I'm not paying attention to the performer.

and he thought he was there to play a concert, as he had a number of times with different presidents in the past, but the audience treated it like a "casual" and talked through his playing.
Sir James was royally pissed off.