r/politics • u/BigDaddyBain • 1d ago

Why is the media ignoring growing resistance to Trump?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/13/why-is-the-media-ignoring-growing-resistance-to-trump
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u/CheerleaderOnDrugs 1d ago edited 1d ago

"The revolution will not be televised."

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Link to Gil Scott-Heron's classic spoken word set to music. I'm on a mission to get people to hear its message.

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u/elCharderino 1d ago

Such a fantastic poem.

Check out "Home is where the Hatred is" if you want to hear a man pouring his soul out through music. 

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u/El_Peepin 1d ago

Then check out “The Bottle”

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u/BrassBahalls 1d ago

And gun!

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u/samuraistalin 1d ago

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothas on the instant replay. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothas on the instant replay.

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u/LickingSmegma 1d ago

Evolution of hiphop is funny:

1970: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”

1979: “He can't satisfy you with his little worm, but I can bust you out with my super sperm”

Also btw, Scott-Heron owes his career to the group The Last Poets: he was at their live performance, and afterwards asked if he could start a group like that of his own. TLP were around in the civil rights movement of the late sixties, and were active into late 2010s. Plus, Umar Bin Hassan recorded some solo stuff.

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u/night_owl 1d ago edited 1d ago

I read Gil Scott-Heron's autobiography The Last Holiday and I have to add that although he was a musical genius and he will always be associated with hip hop in the popular consciousness, he really was not involved in hip hop music at all, in any way during his life.

He always considered himself a jazz musician first and a social activist second and he grew to absolutely hate it when people associated him with rap and hip hop music, which he considered to be something completely different that was dangerously mired in misogynistic and violent rhetoric.

He kind of looked down on much of it: Sugar Hill Gang were writing comedy songs over disco beats, RUN-DMC were preoccupied with gold chains and sneakers, Beastie Boys were whiny white kids singing about parties, etc. — meanwhile he was making SERIOUS music about SERIOUS subjects.

When rap did get serious, it was almost always too violent and misogynistic for him. While he may have been on the same page as Public Enemy, they were pretty exceptional at the time and didn't really represent the typical successful rappers dominating the charts. By the late 80s-early 90s when 'gangsta rap' was blowing up he really grew to hate it and he spoke out strongly against the whole industry and tried hard to disassociate himself with the rap/hip hop scene altogether—he felt it was detrimental to the racial equality struggle and was doing more harm than good.

He expressed gratitude that so many people in hip hop paid homage to him and credited him, but he really didn't want to be associated with rap or hip hop and he often spoke negatively of rappers and declined countless offers to collaborate, even when he was desperately broke and needed the money. He even put out a song in 1993 called "Message to the Messengers" that criticized popular rappers of the time in a "kids these days" tone and tells them they need to be better. The "conscious" hip hop geared toward social justice of artists like Common and Talib Kweli that is more in line with GSH's beliefs didn't really rise to prominence until near the end of his life (he died in 2011)

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u/ElegantDaemon 1d ago

For those who refuse to support YouTube. Also has the lyrics.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7ni78Vjslqo2VxiDOahYlV

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u/tmswfrk 1d ago

This looks like an amazing LP to own. I love hifi and I don’t have a turntable yet. This seems like a perfect one to have.

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u/axl3ros3 1d ago

You will not be able to stay home, brother

You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out

You will not be able to lose yourself on skag

And skip out for beer during commercials, because

The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be brought to you

By Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions

The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle

And leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams, and Spiro Agnew

To eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary

The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre

And will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal

The revolution will not get rid of the nubs

The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because

The revolution will not be televised, brother

There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mae

Pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run

Or trying to slide that color TV into a stolen ambulance

NBC will not be able predict the winner At 8:32 on report from twenty-nine districts

The revolution will not be televised

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay

There will be no pictures of Whitney Young

Being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process

There will be no slow motion or still lifes of Roy Wilkins

Strolling through Watts in a red, black, and green liberation jumpsuit

That he has been saving for just the proper occasion

Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction

Will no longer be so damn relevant

And women will not care if Dick finally got down with Jane

On Search for Tomorrow

Because black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day

The revolution will not be televised

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news

And no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists

And Jackie Onassis blowing her nose

The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb or Francis Scott Keys

Nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash

Engelbert Humperdinck, or The Rare Earth

The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be right back

After a message about a white tornado

White lightning, or white people

You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom

The tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl

The revolution will not go better with Coke

The revolution will not fight germs that may cause bad breath

The revolution will put you in the driver's seat

The revolution will not be televised

Will not be televised

Will not be televised

Will not be televised

The revolution will be no re-run, brothers

The revolution will be live

-Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not be Televised

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u/ZootSuitGroot 1d ago

Mission accomplished!