Revisiting Pablo Neruda’s little book of anti-fascist poetry, published in 1936 amidst the Spanish Civil War.

An excerpt from his Memoirs, which prefaces the book, poignantly reads, “Time passed. We were beginning to lose the war.”

(6/6) On a related note, Woody Guthrie despised Fred Trump, Sr. so much that he wrote a song decrying his racist housing policies called “Old Man Trump.” Had he lived long enough to see Fred’s son, Donald, become president, he would have hated his guts.

(5/6) Guthrie urges Americans not to be fooled by fascist policies and half-cocked demagoguery disguised as populist rhetoric.

(4/6) “Lindbergh” playfully examines how the popular aviator’s isolationist stance and suspected Nazi sympathies benefited Hitler during World War II at the expense of an American public whose votes could be swayed by gas prices, religion, and the cult of celebrity.

(3/6) Curiously, both the melody and refrain can be heard in the Carter Family’s wistful ballad, “The Cannon-Ball,” about a train that runs along the same route. But Guthrie alters the refrain, “From Buffalo to Washington,” to “Washington, Washington,” as a lament for American exceptionalism.

(2/6) Recorded in 1944, “Lindbergh” takes its tune from Charlie Poole’s “White House Blues,” recorded in 1926.
A classic American train song dramatizing the aftermath of President McKinley’s assassination, its refrain follows the dying man’s train in a race against time “from Buffalo to Washington.”

(1/6) During Donald Trump’s first presidential administration, I heard my anxieties echoed back to me through Woody Guthrie’s song, “Lindbergh,” about celebrity aviator turned Nazi sympathizer, Charles Lindbergh.

I return to it now, on the eve of Trump’s second term.