First everybody played.

Now everybody’s pissed.

For years it was new and exciting. The connection of AOL, the gadgets of Apple, the social networking of Facebook and the arrival of the smartphone. The promise was an improved society, where we were all networked and all important.

But it didn’t turn out that way. We didn’t foresee the Balkanization. We didn’t foresee the lack of individual importance. We didn’t see technology breaking down the world into the haves and have-nots.

Social interaction online used to be cheery.

Now it’s angry.

That’s right, you were sold a bill of goods. You’ve got that smartphone in your hands, all that power, and no one is paying attention to you. You’re inundated with mostly worthless information about successful bozos, influencers and minor celebrities, and it makes you feel like you’re worthless. So what do you do? YOU FIGHT BACK!

Everyone can play. And everybody is reachable.

Analogized to high school, the social misfit is alone with no power, but now he can hassle the quarterback, the prom queen, poke fun at their foibles while risking nothing.

That’s right, there are no guardrails, few laws affecting online behavior. Furthermore, when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.

Societal interaction has flourished as a result of the internet. But twenty-odd years later, when the promise has not been delivered, the hoi polloi are fighting back.

Look at Amazon reviews. Read the one star ones and it’s always someone complaining not about the product, but Amazon and customer service. Believing if they just scream loud enough, they’ll get a response. And if the product itself is taken down in the process, who cares, they’re deep pockets and can afford it.

Anybody with a name is the enemy. They need scapegoats. Whether it be immigrants or Jews or… Isn’t Mark Zuckerberg Jewish? It’s his fault!

And by rooting for the Palestinians, you’re standing up to those nasty Jews.

Then again, the Palestinians have their own media machine, painting Israel as the problem, as if it disappeared harmony would reign in the Middle East.

If you can’t get ahead, you must bring others down.

And what tools do you have? You ain’t got no money. Chances are you ain’t got no education, so you can’t get a good job, but you do have a megaphone, your smartphone.

And we have the battling cable news stations. Fox isn’t about the implementation of ideas, rather the heinous behavior of the left. And MSNBC reacts defensively thereto.

And the traditional news outlets failed to defend themselves and have therefore been marginalized. The “New York Times” and the “Washington Post” were so busy making sure they got paid online, blaming Google and Facebook, that they didn’t realize they’d lost their impact in society at large. When you’re demonized by close to half the populace, it’s like you don’t even exist.

Same deal with network and cable. Netflix trumped them and now the streaming giant is the enemy. Misinformation about the expiration of Netflix’s TV show contracts has been rampant, even if it’s untrue. Yes, truth has gone out the window.

Even with Tesla. It’s become a financial story, not a changing of the world story. Those invested in the old game decry the electric car company, even though the international auto giants are trying to catch up, even though every single Tesla owner testifies to the car’s greatness, from no need for tune-ups to acceleration to…

But you don’t see that in the media.

Every step forward has a concomitant tribe demonizing it. To the point we have gridlock, turning the USA into a second class country. Funny how these are the same people constantly chanting USA, USA!

But the future doesn’t exist. No one wants their cheese moved. Whether it be the baby boomers who became doctors and lawyers who are angry they weren’t aware they could become billionaires to the manufacturing workers who believe they should be able to labor for umpteen dollars ad infinitum.

Then again, it’s hard for the disinformation police to get traction when you’ve got a President who tells you China and Mexico will pay the tariffs.

Sure, we’ve now got access to more news than we had in the twentieth century, but the end result is everybody believes in their own news, and is convinced if they just stand their ground, things will work out for them. Used to be we could at least agree on the facts. Now facts are fungible.

So you’ve got the aggressors, usually know-nothing individuals, and those with traction, who are gun-shy, or performing stunts for attention.

You get the impression if you’re a law-abiding citizen not looking to get rich on the internet you’re a loser. When the truth is almost all of us are losers by those metrics. We’re never gonna be famous, we’re never gonna be rich, and most of those with attention will fade back into the woodwork, attention doesn’t keep you happy and it doesn’t necessarily pay anyway.

It’s just like the Republican Senators afraid of their base. If you go against Trump you’re going to earn the wrath of people tweeting and primarying you so you’d better stay quiet. Just like the Republican Party infrastructure has lost control of its party.

And on the left, the ethos is a distillation of social media. If you’re not posting, you don’t have a voice. So what do those silent want, Biden or Bernie or..? It’s hard to tell, everybody’s guessing.

It isn’t going to stay this way forever. Just because you made a record that does not mean anybody’s going to listen to it. And all over the world there’s a return to the right, authoritarians pledging to make the trains run on time, to get rid of the chaos. That’s right, people are willing to give up their individual power just to not have to think about these things anymore, they want someone to lift the burden from their shoulders.

Meanwhile, the small will get smaller and the big will get bigger once the small learn they truly don’t have any power. Yes, one person can change the world, but it probably isn’t you. Decision-makers have to ignore the rabble-rousers and do what’s right. But they’re afraid.

Then again, everybody’s so busy fighting there can be no progress. If you don’t have power you’re gonna make sure the powerful pay a price. That’s why you’re a troll.

But the trolls have inherited the earth.

I saw Linda Perry speak at Canadian Music Week. They have these conferences all over the world, usually supported by the government, and there are two halves, a festival for the wannabes performing in search of deal, and meetings and speakers on music topics. Now the truth is some people make it, but most don’t. But at every conference around the world, the speakers give the attendees false hope.

This happened to me at USC when I was on tour with Jason Flom. He told the students that it was easy to make it in music, that business was booming, jobs were plentiful, and we were eagerly awaiting graduates’ arrival.

Wrong.

I, of course, led with what I always say. I told the students to give up. Unless they were willing to starve and get fired, the music business wasn’t for them. It wasn’t a hobby, there was no need of temps to fill office jobs, the truth is that many people are willing to work around the clock for free, and their job is always on the line, a manager’s acts don’t hit, you lose your gig.

Actually, the business is made up of self-starters, entrepreneurs, who literally couldn’t do anything else.

Linda Perry said this in Toronto. Along with the fact that no one in the audience was a rock star.

Whew! She was not giving false hope, not trying to make the audience feel good, she was challenging them, and almost none are open to the task.

But this hard news went out of favor with the baby boomers and Gen-X. Now youngsters are coddled, given a trophy for participation, told they can win each time they play.

Oh, don’t tell me about millennials and their work ethic, the truth is there are very few standard jobs in the music industry, where you’re working for the man, the corporation. Most gigs are for entrepreneurs, who can fire you at will. And do! The truth is unless you control the talent, your job is always on the line. As for talent… Perry is pissed that it’s all about social networking as opposed to hard practice. The 10,000 hour rule is about hard practice. Social networking does not qualify for musicianship. It may make you an influencer, but it won’t make you a recording star.

Then again, no one wants to hear that. They want to believe the world has changed, but it still comes down to hits.

So Linda Perry has her own recording studio, in a house. This is not the typical home studio, with a Pro Tools rig and little more. Sure, they’ve got the requisite Mac, but an API board, multiple rooms, a zillion guitars…hell, there were three axes in the bathroom!

Linda isn’t here to play around, she’s here to write hits. Which she has done for Pink and Christina Aguilera and Gwen Stefani. Hell, she’s even worked with Weezer and Adele. She’s in demand. She hasn’t taken a vacation in years. She’s writing, she’s delivering.

And she’s intense.

Now I’m not challenging in an interview, there’s no point. People will get their hackles up. The key is to let someone feel comfortable so they can tell their story, always revealing what most rapid fire questions won’t.

And I’m trying to connect with Linda, make her feel comfortable, but then after about ten or fifteen minutes she asks, WHO ARE YOU?

Whew! I took it as a challenge, to put forth my bona fides, so I did. Early in the podcast you’ll hear me tell my life story, albeit quickly by my standards. And then I felt accepted by Linda and…

I wasn’t sure we were totally connecting, but when the recording was over and I went to leave, she asked for a hug.

Linda’s in the belly of the beast. And on a rainy day in L.A., I was there too. Linda climbed her way to the top, she had a vision, and she executed it. if you’re interested in making it, you should listen.

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How do you lose a Presidency?

Very slowly, then all at once.

Clinton lies about a blow job and he’s impeached. Trump obstructs justice and acts like a doofus, but he skates. HOW CAN THIS BE?

This is the way it is folks. The Republicans are an alliance between the rich and the poor, with a few religious nuts thrown in the mix. The Democrats are made up of the middle class. The educated, those who’ve paid their dues to make it in the new economy. But they’ve been labeled LOSERS! THE PROBLEM! God, the right wing propaganda machine is so strong, you’d think that the economy of Alabama is stronger than that of California.

Regulation bad. Hinders business people. But how would you like it if your apartment building collapsed, good luck getting the government to pay for your loss, even disasters aren’t disasters anymore.

And they say impeachment will slow down the wheels of government. HUH? They’re not getting anything done anyway. The House proposes and Trump and the Senate deny. Nothing happens.

Meanwhile, the Republicans play a long game. Not only with the Federalist Society and the demonization of taxes, but the demonization of the left. Believe me, if the Republicans hadn’t spent twenty plus years defining Hillary Clinton as a witch, she’d be President. You see you get ahead of the news, you play for the future, or you lose.

Just ask the music business, trying to put its finger in the dike of file-sharing. You know what killed recording revenue? The youth, with their high speed connections at college and their facility with technology. And the youth are key to the government, and there are a lot of young people, especially women, rallying the troops and delivering excitement. But they too are demonized, defined, why is the left so afraid?

Impeachment… Will offend the electorate. The Dems are so afraid of offending people that they’re paralyzed. Trump grabs women’s private parts and the left is so busy defining rape and making men cower that the big issues are left behind.

Yes, the big issues. Everybody wants everybody to stay in their lane, to have no opinion. But the dirty little secret is if you raise your hand up, have a profile, you’re annihilated, by the rank and file. That’s what the internet has wrought…it’s empowered everybody with a connection to reach up and grab someone by the pussy and make them doubt their views and their participation.

Used to be you were disconnected from the blowback, and the hoi polloi felt powerless. Hell, the reason those Senators won’t break rank is they’re afraid of being primaried. Everybody’s so afraid they won’t do what’s right.

Come on, how can we believe in the government, in the American Way, if Trump is not impeached. Will he be convicted? I’ll get to that.

But this wanker has done so many heinous things. Putin assures him the Russians didn’t interfere in 2016 and he believes it, at least parrots it. Meanwhile, Mueller definitively states the Russians did.

And the truth is as a result of gerrymandering and voter suppression the left’s voice has been stymied. Throw in the electoral college while you’re at it. But whenever you do this, the right cries FOUL! When there’s a foul in the NBA does the perpetrator GIVE UP? No, he doubles down, it incentivizes him.

So according to Fox and Lindsey Graham, Trump was exonerated today. It’s like bad science fiction, there’s no truth left. My inbox is filled up with idiots sending me right wing sites as if they’re the truth. They can Google and find out they’re biased with an agenda, but they won’t. You know why they won’t? THE RIGHT WING HAS WON!

That’s right. There should be no taxes, you’re entitled to all the money you make, and the reason you’re broke is because of immigrants.

That’s like those people complaining about the closure of GM’s Lordstown plant. Reminds me of what Sam Kinison said about Biafra…don’t send food, send SUITCASES! These people have got to move!

How come no one can lose out in America? Techies pivot, but the brain dead doing manual labor believe they’re entitled to lifetime employment. And then they bitch the safety net is not strong enough. THAT’S YOUR FAULT!

That’s the America we live in today, one of division, one of tribes. And if you think you can convince members of the opposite team to switch parties, YOU’RE DREAMING!

When someone tells you they’re an “independent,” that just means they’re a Republican who doesn’t want the blowback. Nobody’s an independent in today’s fractured world, that’s a myth. But the media and the parties pay fealty to it.

And speaking of the youth, you’ve got to tell me how young people will get excited about Joe Biden, who’s got his own trail of #MeToo moments. It’d be like giving the reins of your Lime or Bird to grandpa. Of course he’s gonna fall off, he’s old and frail and he doesn’t know how it works!

But then you have the baby boomers crying ageism.

That’s America, where everybody believes they can do everything. But they can’t. Hell, even professional athletes retire, they just can’t do it anymore, but the boomer needs to believe he can still win the U.S. Open… HOGWASH!

Maybe we were always a conniving, untrustworthy nation, maybe now we just know about it. But one thing’s for sure, morality wins in the end. Because people need something to believe in.

If you can believe in today’s music, you’re delusional. Has a good beat and you can dance to it, but that’s about it. As for rock… People who can’t sing performing songs without memorable choruses and bridges who are playing to an ever smaller audience circling the drain. God, why can’t we get back to the garden? The Englishmen listened to the Delta bluesmen a few decades after their heyday. Now it’s fifty years later and Greta Van Fleet is castigated for sounding like Led Zeppelin. But Greta is the most successful new act out there!

But the music business can’t learn any lessons.

Everybody just wants to get paid. That’s how we got into this fracas. Label heads wanted their bonuses, they didn’t care about the future.

If you second guess what people want, you lose in the end. In music, it’s the left field unheard item that breaks all the rules that triumphs. But we’re told that in politics this won’t work, we’ve got to adhere to the past.

Impeach the sucker. Who cares if he’s convicted. Stand up for something. Play the long game. And, for those who lived through Watergate, Nixon looked like he was winning until the final moment, when the Republican senators insisted he resign. If you don’t think the same thing is possible here, you’ve got no sense of history.

As for pissing people off… WHO? No registered Democrat is gonna vote for Trump and the indies are Republicans anyway. It’s a small sliver of people who make a difference, and most of ’em don’t even vote. Yup, if you get people excited they vote, they feel they can make a difference. That’s how Trump won in 2016 and the Dems took back the House in 2018.

IGNORE THE REPUBLICANS AND FOX NEWS! You just can’t win that battle. If you think Dems on Fox are gonna make a difference, you’ve never watched that channel. Oldsters watch it like kids in the eighties watched MTV, they were ADDICTED! But if you put on Perry Como or Rosemary Clooney would they have gone for it? NO!

Everybody knows better, everybody blinks. It’s all about the data.

But data can’t write a hit song. Data can only replicate what’s already been done. When it comes to innovation, creativity, you need people.

This is the story of our time. In Germany, they’re telling Jews not to wear skullcaps. In America, not only did right wing wingnuts say the Jews would not replace them, as if there were enough Jews to do this, but one ended up killing a young woman.

But all we’ve got on the left is outrage and sympathy, we don’t DO anything!

I always wondered about those people who fought for their country. Lose your life over politics? But now I understand.

Everybody’s got a computer in their hand, but climate science can’t be trusted. It’s as if you were convinced your calculator delivered the wrong result.

People have power. If they organize around a principle and lead.

The Democrats are afraid of offending anybody and as a result no one is excited about them. Come on, I see Chuck Schumer on TV and I want to puke. He’s parsing his words, he’s cooking up nothing, and the guy in the White House is tweeting outrageously all day long?

I don’t like AOC’s view on the Jews and Israel, but one thing I’ll tell you for sure, she got a lot of people excited, and she drew attention to herself and got tons of media. Forget that the right wing branded her. SHE BRANDED HERSELF FIRST!

So I want all you lefties to unite, behind people who are passionate who want change.

Biden returning to what once was? What, do you want me to go back to Windows 95?

Hate me all you want. E-mail me I’m an idiot. That’s just the point. I can take it, I’m not gonna blink.

But for those who are on my side, it’s time to rise up with your eyes open and say…WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!

She’s got a plan for that.

Pete Buttigieg waffled on abortion on Fox.

After Georgia and Alabama restricted abortion rights, Elizabeth Warren introduced a plan to defend abortion rights and reproductive health care. And, she won’t go on Fox.

The Republicans play offense.

And the Democrats play defense.

If you’re afraid to piss someone off, you’re a loser. You’ve got to own your position, forget naysayers, and plow ahead.

In Hollywood they apologize regularly. But Trump never does. And he won, he’s President.

Oh, don’t talk to me about the popular vote, or gerrymandering or voter suppression. That’s the Democrats, always fighting the last war.

Then again, on Fox Hillary Clinton is President. Then again, that just rallies and solidifies Trump’s base. Meanwhile, under the guise of “fairness,” the “New York Times” attacks Democratic candidates.

Forget the Pocahontas thing. You don’t engage your critics online, keeping a story alive, you just wait for it to blow over. And the truth is most people are not swayed by issues like this. They’re more worried about their pocketbook and the right to live freely, and that includes abortion. How the Republicans ended up the party of “freedom,” I’ll never know. They keep on restricting our behavior.

And the truth is the populace is ignorant and no one knows less than an insider. Isn’t that what we learned in 2016, with Hillary’s failed candidacy? No one has a hold on the public these days, that’s the story of the decade, the splintering of our nation, caused to a great degree by income inequality. Meanwhile, you can’t attack the rich, because they’ve won and they’re job creators. And if you believe that, you’re probably one of them.

People are afraid of Elizabeth Warren. And that’s how every rock star made it. From the Beatles to Alanis Morissette. John Lennon said his band was bigger than Jesus. Ah, the backlash. It only BOOSTED the Beatles’ career. Because everybody in the target demo knew it was true, and could parse the words. As for Alanis giving head in a theatre, now the #MeToo generation is blowing back about that, losing the plot. We’re here because of sex. Which is oftentimes raunchy and weird. But if it’s between two consenting adults, WHO CARES?

That’s the Democratic Party, so busy creating a big tent that a lot of the population doesn’t want to enter. We need a leader, speaking the truth, to draw people in, WITH PASSION!

No one’s passionate about Joe Biden, he’s the safe “electable” choice, like Jeb Bush, John Kerry, John McCain and Mitt Romney before him. Ever notice that the safe choice never makes it?

So Trump turns the game on its head. Knowing that America loves a train-wreck and hope. That’s right, Trump gave people hope that something would be different. That it just wouldn’t be business as usual, which is what Hillary was offering. Don’t tell me Clinton was better prepared, that’s like saying the Ramones weren’t any good because their members couldn’t play as well as Yes.

This is the way it always happens. There’s a mainstream, and then an outsider comes along and blows the status quo apart, revealing we live in a new world.

And it never happens overnight. There’s always a long term of preparation off the radar. Warren paid her dues and she won!

She woodshedded at Harvard. And then made noise after being hired by Obama to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. No wonder the Republicans freaked out. They want the corporations to be able to rape and pillage without restriction.

And then she defeated a Republican to become a member of the Senate. This is like playing clubs and graduating to arenas.

Now she wants to play in stadiums, can she sell out?

What do we know? If you start in arenas you usually stumble and fall. You’ve got to build it, over time, by word of mouth.

And it’s never the usual suspects who take chances. It’s always some promoter or manager who believes. And lo and behold, these are the ones who triumph!

Taylor Swift is stumbling trying to follow trends.

Adele is her own trend. She sits above the fray.

You can’t be wishy-washy, you’ve got to own your identity.

And the press keeps propping up Pete and Beto, who are nonstarters. Pete is a nice guy who is not seasoned and Beto is a guy who fought an unwinnable war and lost. That’s right, he did not beat Ted Cruz for Senate. In what world does that make him fit for the Presidency?

Anybody with money hates Elizabeth Warren. Just ask them. They’re afraid they’re going to lose something. SHOULDN’T THEY? Enough with the fiction that we can lift the bottom up with the top not sacrificing. They’re never gonna take all your money. Maybe you can cough some up!

But no, you’ve got to play to everybody! As if everybody loves Nine Inch Nails or Lil Yachty. But we’re distracted by sideshows, like Lil Nas X.

That’s the world we live in, where the sideshow rules. You go for eyeballs, substance is irrelevant. It’s all about feeding the machine, and nothing changes.

But this century has been all about change. And those in power hate it! Like the aforementioned “New York Times,” which can’t stop printing anti-technology screeds. As if a twenty year old, WHO CAN VOTE!, will cough up their smartphone. Hell, even the boomers don’t want to give up their smartphones, they just want YOU TO!

The twenty first century is not about cohesiveness, that was the monoculture back in the eighties and nineties.

Then again, those who ruled back then can’t get over the fact that someone moved their cheese.

The twenty first century is about communication, connection. And the only thing the Democrats can do is complain. It’s Facebook’s fault. It’s always somebody’s fault but their own

We need leadership. We need optimism. We need someone to rally around.

Hell, we’ve got the same situation in music. The major labels don’t sign anything new and edgy, they just keep giving the public what they think it wants…hip-hop and pop. Meanwhile, other genres sell tickets and have more traction than ever. You avoid the future and you lose out. You’ve always got to look where we’re going, not where we’ve been.

Let’s see… Warren runs against Trump and people are not going to vote for her because she may or may not have Native American blood, because she’s a woman, because she’s not afraid to fight?

YOU’RE DREAMING!

People overlooked Trump’s rudeness and peccadilloes because they believed in his message and/or did not like Hillary.

Bernie was the candidate of 2016. Talk about electable, he would have beaten Trump, because Bernie was speaking from the heart and it resonated.

It’s like we’re in a sailing race and Warren is tacking away from the field. And at first everybody said she was crazy, but now her numbers keep going up and…

The media can’t stop talking about her lack of cash.

The cash comes AFTER the message, not before! You cannot foist a new act upon the public, no matter how much you spend, you’ve got to build it to critical mass and THEN put the pedal to the metal.

Meanwhile, Warren knows it’s about keeping your name in the press. These biweekly proposals get her ink, when the competition is afraid to go on the record for fear they’ll piss someone off.

We don’t go backward, we always go forward. The labels couldn’t kill file-trading, we ended up with a new paradigm, streaming, even if it did take fifteen years. Furthermore, it was a good thing, it rained down more cash. But you can’t convince the oldsters, the losers, the same people tuned into Fox who want to go back to an era that wasn’t so good to begin with!

America is screwed up. There’s more economic mobility in Europe than there is in the U.S.A. You can’t make it on minimum wage, which the right refuses to raise because it’s gonna kill the job creators. Oh, come on.

You see the right has an answer for everything.

And the left is constantly flummoxed, trying to defend its position as it argues amongst itself. That’s right, some of the biggest haters of Elizabeth Warren are Democrats themselves, the Party, they think she’s unelectable, they want to anoint the candidate.

Just ask a record label. The public decides what hits, not the company.

We’re all looking for something new, fresh and different.

This is why the public is in charge, when they catch wind of something and they latch on it becomes a phenomenon, from One Direction to Billie Eilish to… And both of those acts were built first on the internet, there was a hard core who believed and talked about them. No one would have put faith in them at the outset, but they won.

Can Elizabeth Warren become President?

Damn straight she can.

Don’t stand in the way of progress, of winners, of change.

Tap into the future or get out of the way. You’re just cluttering the pathway to glory.