There is no cock in Eddie Vedder’s rock anymore, nor any of these so-called “rockers.” At one time, Pearl Jam and the whole genre, the entire rock and roll industry, actually, was giving the political establishment, “The Man,” the single finger and even double-barrel salute.
Now, they are all eunuchs tossin’ the establishment’s salad.
Crude, I know. Yet, here we are, the spectacle in full view.
I should say tossin’ their salad. “Their” meaning: liberal pols, whom these supposed “rockers” follow around to cocktail parties and political events to gripe about world hunger, American imperialism, and climate change—while denouncing addiction and the sexual abuse of women …
of which there is absolutely no history whatsoever in all of rock and roll lore!
Eh-hm.
As if some sort of fearsome outlaw, Jon Bon Jovi said he was “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” Well, they found him. Then they took him and turned him into a respectable show pony for establishment dignitaries. Hell, he may as well be leashed and on all-fours in black vinyl bondage attire and a bar gag.
“It’s my life … !” screams Bon Jovi, nearly unintelligible for the bar gag.
You bet it is, Jon. You and Vedder both. It’s just, a eunuch’s life now.
But hey, thanks for the memories.
“Ur elcome,” he replies, still nearly unintelligible.
Put these guys in the 60’s, and Woodstock would have been called: “Save the Wood Duck.”
But I digress.
Vedder may be peddling all “The Man’s” political desires now, but he still wrote some good music before becoming a gelding. Obviously, it is the testosterone that makes rockers rock harder, and that keeps the much necessary and much admired cock in the rock. Nevertheless, a lyric from one of Vedder’s old tunes serves to expose an egregious political sin.
In the Pearl Jam track, Nothingman [how, um, apropos] Vedder wrote about a girl who once believed his every word and story, but who one day became suspicious and distrustful. In other words, the veil concealing Vedder’s real identity caught too much wind. Ripped away, his lover’s eyes were abruptly opened to a new, long existing reality she simply could not previously perceive …
Vedder was a full of crap loser.
Better now than later, honey. It’s a good thing, trust me.
This phenomenon happens to people all the time, especially romantically. It’s all tulips and unicorns for a while, until one day someone wakes up to a rainbowy pile of unicorn crap in their tulip patch. It is precisely what happened to the American people in the 2016 presidential election and the ensuing 10 years. For decades, and much to the political establishment’s delight and benefit, the American people had been buying every word the establishment had to say, and every story it had to tell. Decade in and decade out, voters were satisfied with the same old political drama—the republican establishment pretending not to be liberals, and liberals letting them do it, all for the benefit of their collective establishment. Talk of tax reform here, border security there, but nothing ever getting done about anything, nothing ever changing. And not getting done or changing because the establishment wanted things to remain just as they were, nice and comfy-like. A well-oiled machine, serviceable and predictable and prosperous … for establishment members, that is.
And that’s the way it remained until Trump came, stone-faced, gliding down the escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy and the end of their establishment grift. It was the beginning of the American people’s own “veil” moment, their forbidden fruit moment, when their eyes began to be opened to what they previously could not perceive …
The rank collusion and corruption of their elite and governing classes.
Or rather, to the pile of rainbowy unicorn crap in the tulip patch.
Before the treasonous Russian collusion plot was in effect and in vogue, it was the GOP, the republican establishment, doing everything it could in their own primary to get rid of Donald Trump, the establishment outsider and their subsequent enemy. Imagine that: helping your political opponents to get rid of your own party’s leading candidate. Republican voters loved Trump, and establishment republicans hated them for it.
Who do these rubes think they are? We pick the republican nominee, not them!
Funny, that’s how democrats feel about their voters, too. The difference is their voters know it.
If you are republicans opposed to democrats and Liberalism, why do you care so much who becomes your party’s nominee? Thereto, it’s the “people’s” choice, isn’t it? The GOP establishment cares because Trump was/is proudly and vociferously opposed to their established order. He didn’t have the establishment’s interests in mind. He had the “rubes’” interests in mind, and all that virtuous American greatness malarky. Simply, establishment republicans feared Trump was going to screw everything up, at home in the GOP and in their larger liberal establishment.
Trump defeated the GOP, of course, resoundingly. Then Hillary lost, and the story became Russia, Russia, Russia! It took a while for the truth of this treasonous plot to be established, but with President Obama and Hillary Clinton involved, as well as the nation’s FBI and CIA, the American people were stunned.
So, first it was the republican establishment trying desperately to take out their own party’s candidate, the people’s candidate, no less. Then it was a treasonous plot by a sitting president and his administration, and on behalf of his party’s presidential candidate, a fact inexplicably overlooked. And if all that wasn’t shocking and traumatizing enough, the American people discovered that their national news media, the people’s guard dogs against tyranny, were involved in the conspiracy, too, and are still actively involved.
Of course, that’s not everything. To conceal their crimes, the conspirators committed election fraud in 2020 and knowingly installed a demented president, whose illness the conspirators kept concealed for 4 years, while they orchestrated an invasion of the United States by illegal immigrants. To prevent his reelection, the conspirators targeted Trump again, too, with massive, manufactured law fare. Then, when the ailing president’s illness was publicly exposed, the conspirators replaced him not with a candidate of the people, but with one of their own choosing. And because it was all going so poorly for them late in the election season 2024, they threw in a couple of assassination attempts for insurance.
For the American people, all of this flagrant political treachery was a lot to absorb, obviously. So, like Vedder’s awakened lover, there they stood, eyes-wide and mouths agape at the pile of rainbowy unicorn manure in their tulip patch. Democrats and republicans had betrayed them. Likewise, their federal law enforcement and intelligence institutions—in fact all their once sacred government institutions have been betraying them. The news media betrayed them, too, and even the judicial system—oh, and don’t forget rock and roll.
Two words: profound betrayal.
Two more: unfathomable betrayal.
Infinitely worse than just rainbowy unicorn guano in the tulip patch, the treachery can best be summed up this way: while the American people trusted their government and worked their asses off to finance a better, stronger, more secure nation, their elite and governing classes were using their hard-earned wages to enrich themselves and their international friends. And when Trump came in to put a stop to it, the elite and governing classes, aka the political establishment, impeached him twice. For the first time in history, they tried him in court as a private citizen, hitting him with 5 separate cases and 93 indictments. Pre-reelection, they tried to exclude him from state ballots. They raided his home and wife’s underwear drawer, all unprecedented. They tried to bankrupt him, and to debank the Trump family so the Trump empire couldn’t do business. To say nothing of the treasonous plot they executed against him, the lethal Chinese bioweapon they employed to rig the 2020 election, which killed millions, incidentally, and the demented president they knowingly installed to hide their crimes and facilitate America’s utter ruination.
All that? That’s how much the elite and governing classes resented Trump’s MAGA mindset and his intrusion into their establishment grifting operation.
And all sanction by, the “rockers.”
The political establishment betrayed the American people, and have been betraying them for a long, long time. Establishment members aren’t interested in democracy in the least. If they were, MAGA wouldn’t be necessary, and Trump wouldn’t be such the reviled, patriotic anomaly. As DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) audits have revealed, establishment liberals, both republican and democrat, have been making government bigger to create more avenues to shuttle taxpayer cash into their political coffers and personal bank accounts. They have been creating wealth for themselves via the stock market and pending legislation. They have been paying a complicit media to lie and shill on their behalf, and shopping their judicial allies to advance their agenda and conceal their crimes. They have been corrupting every government agency, too, so that the agencies not only do their bidding, but obstruct and destroy all elected and unelected opposition to their established fiefdom—which is pretty sweet, they must admit.
“Reaching across the aisle” was always just, performance art for the unsuspecting “rubes.”
Aided by gelding “rockers” like Bon Jovi and Vedder, the establishment has been playing the American people, their trusting lover, for suckers. Thanks to Trump, however, the people have discovered the unicorn excrement and are now wise to the con. Still, the establishment players think they are protected, and they are currently. Only, it’s not for their power and control, but purely because the American people, specifically the MAGA class, 78 million strong, are hardworking, patriotic, law-abiding people who still believe in the rule of law, and who are still counting on their government, meaning the Trump administration, to rectify the establishment’s treasonous betrayal and abuse of them.
The American people have been watching and listening carefully. They have been dutifully voting in rectitude and reform, and despite being relentlessly provoked, keeping their cool and their powder dry. If the reckoning doesn’t materialize, then to this lawful, loyal, duty-bound group of genuine American patriots, that means there is no law worth respecting, and then no justice but street justice.
And here’s a question for these establishment geldings and outlaws:
How enraged and retributive would people be when they realize their once trusted beloved has stolen their money, abused them and their family, and jilted them for a communist whore?
“Uh-oh!” Bon Jovi says, this time with perfect intelligibility.
©JMW 2025/9
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John Mark Warren 