the brief

taking it to the streets in the Black Lives Matter era, an anthemic protest against hypocritical rightwing politicians undermining democracy, and a vow to change the future

---

Jesse Cook's song To the Horizon was another async track I had come across in the early 3.2 period, put on my 'maybes' playlist and occasionally listened to while that set was coming forward. It was a musically interesting song and I liked its energy, but it was too fast, too complex structurally for me to get. By summer 2020, I had pretty much concluded it would not become a karosong.

I was wrong of course or you wouldn't be reading this. In late September 2020, I began to sense there was a song in there, and I got a stub of lyrics that suggested it was going to be a song of political protest.

no you're no ninja mcturdle
you're just an ugly old snapper
in the cesspool of history

---

It was the 42nd song to start channeling, the third in the 3.3 set, the 2nd pure poli-flavour karosong, and just the 2nd with the credits at the end rather than the start.

---

I knew who 'McTurdle' was right away*, but wasn't sure if he would be the subject of the song, just a rhetorical device, or both. After several weeks, I began to sense the opening lyrics, a strident "don't you tell us" rejection of McTurdle's authority that bridged into what I now could see was the chorus.

---

don't you tell us how it's gonna be
don't you tell us where it's gonna go
you're not the boss of we

don't you tell us where we can live
don't you tell us who we can love
don't you tell us what we can dream

no you're no ninja mcturdle
you're just an ugly old snapper
so don't you tell us how it's going to be
don't you tell us

no you're no ninja mcturdle
you're just an ugly old snapper
in the cesspool of history

---

But it was still another several weeks, into the sub-vocal channeling period of winter 2021, before the song really started pushing forward and I got the sense of the song's big structure.

bridge to chorus / chorus / ? verse ? /
chorus / ? verse ? / bridge to credits / credits

The structure was reminiscent of the three funi-flavour 3.2 songs (Damn straight i'm a liar, Shake'n bake , and Brick walls ). And like those songs when they were coming, the verses were mostly a blank until long after the chorus and bridges had filled in and even been mastered.

---

we are young and we are strong
we are black and brown and white
red blue and green and we are the future
and we are reaching for it now

and all we're asking is it live up to those words
you taught us but you never really believed them

did you mcturdle?

---

But I learned long ago that you can't rush a karosong. They come as they come, on their own schedule. Those two verses remained mostly unknown until I had returned to my home studio and started recording again. I could 'hear' sections of external audio in both verses — famous quotes about democracy in the first verse; street protest chanting in the second. But these were nebulous, uncertain. Which quotes? Which chants?

Across that spring and well into summer, I could feel the missing verses coming forward, though only in small bits on either side of the external audio sections which remained indistinct.

The bits that did come were increasingly scathing of McTurdle's hypocrisy.

---

"government of the people by the people
for the people"
"all people are created equal"
"one person one vote"

oh sure you knew all the words
knew how to put your hand on your heart
and recite them as though you meant them

but it was all an act, wasn't it mcturdle?
just another preening bit part in that
same old lost cause

---

Unlike earlier eco/poli songs, I had few inner struggles about fairness and balance. The real-life McTurdle is a loathsome white supremacist who professes love for democracy but undermines it at every opportunity. He is the type of politician America's sputtering Model T democracy enables and rewards.

Fair game in other words.**

But I increasingly sensed the song was not just about McTurdle, that it was also about the future, that it would be an anthem, a generational vow to keep fighting for a real democracy, one that valued, nurtured and protected all its citizens.

---

you're just the dead hand of hate
rising from that fetid swamp
but the credits are already rolling and
you only think you're coming back

time is on our side

---

It was a joyful task to bring that part of the song into being, first with a quote from Dr Martin Luther King Jr that I had heard and absorbed back in the optimistic 1960s, and then with a Dylanesque bridge.

---

it was the good doctor said the arc of history is long
but it bends towards justice
you've been doing your best to stop that happening
but we . . . yes we . . . we shall make it bend

yes we shall we shall make it bend
yes we shall bend it down
we shall we shall make it bend
we shall, we shall bend it down

---

The bridge returned the song to its opening for a closing coup de grace that completed the message and made it a true anthem for the streets.

---

so you don't you tell us how it's gonna be
don't you tell us where it's gonna go
you're not the boss of we

don't you tell us how it's gonna be
don't you tell us where it's gonna go
you're not the boss of we

we the people

---

* But he shall remain nameless. No, not like Voldemort. Like a fart at a posh dinner party.

** What's a Canadian doing commenting on an American politician, or America's crumbling democracy for that matter?

Well, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau once said of Canada's shared border with the United States that it was like a mouse sleeping next to an elephant. Anything the elephant does, just rolling over, affects the mouse. So Canadians have a vested interest in knowing what the elephant is up to.

As well, our respective political systems are both Model Ts created by elites for and on behalf of elites. So both have significant flaws that enable unscrupulous politicians and undemocratic outcomes. The political and social movements struggling to create more perfect democracies in the US and Canada inevitably spill into the other country. Progressives in both countries are joined at the hip.

And besides, when you claim to be a shining city on the hill, a beacon for the world, then it's fair game for anyone to point out the bullshit.