Normally, I do not put out two postings in one day, but today I could not resist. The video of Bob Dylan at the end of this posting was the coda to Paul Krugman‘s newsletter today.
On the off chance you are not familiar with Krugman, he is a Nobel Laureate in Economics, the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and was a columnist with the New York Times for nearly 30 years until the newspaper made a sharp turn to the right and more or less ran him off. I suppose he is considered a Liberal, I find him to be a little left of center and one of the sanest voices currently in American politics. I used to read him regularly before the newspaper went behind a paywall. A friend recently gifted me a free subscription to his newsletter on SubStack, which is where he went with his heavily factual opinion pieces after his stint at the New York Times.
Listening to Dylan started me thinking of other times. I graduated high school in North Kingstown, RI, in 1970. For many of us of that era, Bob Dylan is the voice of our generation. The 60s and much of the 70s were another very turbulent time in the United States, the fight for Civil Rights, followed by a very unpopular war in Vietnam. I, along with many others, were in the streets protesting against the war and the strong-arm tactics of the Nixon administration. I was even in a group trying to seize the Administration Building at the University of Rhode Island. At this juncture I am not quite sure why this building, but it seemed the thing to do at the time. I never really considered myself a hippie, but one of my Kentucky cousins called Robin and I old hippies. Well maybe, I will take the appellation now, it seems to fit at one level.
Something that perplexes me is why we are not in the streets more considering the atrocious policies of the tRump administration and his attempt to destroy all the things I consider best about this country. Yes, we have participated in two No Kings Day demonstrations and there have been various demonstrations around the country against the quasi-Nazi tactics of ICE. But we need to do more, and we need to be consistent in our pressure to rid ourselves of tRump and Draconian policies of the Republican Party.
At this point, I am not quite sure if all the demonstrations against the Vietnam War were effective, or we just had our asses kicked by the North Vietnamese, but we got out. But I believe they protests had a big role in our eventual exit from that country and the war. Hopefully, protests could have similar effect in ridding us of what Krugman terms a madman, aka tRump.
We need to be doing the same today. If we do not, we will not have a country recognizable as a democracy in a very short order.
Here is a link to Krugman’s newsletter for January 19, 2026: Big Business Should End Its Faustian Bargain With Trump
As an aside, the man who bought Dylan’s catalog of work is from Tulsa, OK. After his purchase, he created the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK, next door to the Woody Guthrie Center. If you are in the area it is worth a visit to either or both museums, but be prepared to spend several hours there at the Bob Dylan Center.
One thing that always strikes me as ironic is how, today in Oklahoma, they honor Woody Guthrie , a socialist who saw socialism as an extension of his Christian values. If he were alive today, this modern crop of Okies would ride him out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered.
Enjoy the video.
Bob Dylan – Like A Rolling Stone (Live at Newport 1965)