If I Had A Hammer
And a piñata.
I.
When Irving Berlin wrote “God Bless America,”
… I wish he had put “bless” into the past tense (“blessed”) and left it right there. So as not to anger the gods through overreach.
By the time Berlin was writing, America/The United States had already garnered an embarrassment of blessings just by geography alone. The United States was buffered by two oceans—making it almost impossible to invade. Right down the middle of the country was a navigable river, the Mississippi, that facilitated trade. West of the Mississippi was some of the most arable, fertile land on the planet. There were deep water ports on both sides of the country. There was abundant clean water, pristine forests, and a list of natural resources that encompassed the periodic chart.
And—poke in the eye—there was also a hard working population, continually refreshed by IMMIGRANTS.
It is only within the last decade that we have had to live with would-be tyrants …
… and, for those of us with a European heritage, also live with the cruelty that people of color have long known as ordinary. (Let this, I hope, be one of the lesson we take from this time. Oh, wait, is that woke? TDB.)
Casting off tyrants is, I hope, still in our bloodstream. (We’ll see.) And when I think of that idea, I think of the people in East Germany—specifically, the East Berliners of 1989. It must have been overpoweringly cathartic to take a hammer or a tong or even a big wooden spoon to that imprisoning Wall. This was forty years of incandescent rage traveling down the arms of ordinary people and landing with a thwang, splitting concrete and rebar into souvenir shards.
I think of this because it defused anger without resulting in violence on people.
We are going to need something of that.
Incandescent rage is, unless very, very narrowly channeled, a dangerous thing. And yet, hardly a day goes by where I don’t feel at least a twinge of it.
And I can’t be the only person who feels this.
II.
I was thirteen when, with my parents and one of my sisters, we visited—it was a pilgrimage, really—the Capitol, Washington D.C. I say “pilgrimage” because it was the April school vacation after the November national nightmare when John Kennedy was shot dead. Visiting the make-shift eternal flame next to his grave was a sort of tourist novena.
I have been fortunate enough to see many of the world’s iconic sites:
… the Pyramids at Giza, the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum, Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris, even The World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Kansas (I am not making this up.) And I can tell you that together—yes, together—they do not equal the overpowering sense of awe I felt when I first saw the Capitol building.
It was nighttime, after a 12-hour drive in the family’s ’64 Chevy Nova, and I was, admittedly, a bit delirious. But the site of the Capitol, all lit up, gleaming white, red white and blue flags lazily drifting in the breeze, an orgy of color, is seared into my brain.
I didn’t feel pride or patriotism. I felt something more powerful: awe. I was gazing at something luminously sacred. If it didn’t take my breath away, it certainly made my heart race.
My second visit to Washington D.C., five short years later, had a decidedly different tone. I was there for the March on Washington on November 15, 1969.
This was not the visit-the-cherry-blossoms, pick-up-a-few-souvenirs vibe of my earlier visit. This Washington D.C. was an armed camp, ready for trouble, National Guard soldiers everywhere. (And with good reason: overnight, the city had swelled by 600,000 people.)
The familiar landmarks—The White House, the Washington Monument, the Capitol Building, the Reflecting Pool—all took on a different hue: they were still awe-inspiring but in a menacing way. They were symbols of government power: the ability to pluck you out of a college Calculus class, slap an M-16 into your hands, and send you half-way around the world for a cause no one could elucidate.
I wasn’t exactly scared, but I was certainly nervous. Okay, I was a little scared. But then I found out: there’s going to be entertainment as well as speeches!
This was a complete surprise.
The lineup was amazing. Well, amazing is an exaggeration. There were people whom I admired greatly on stage, for their conviction and their willingness to put themselves on the line: Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, John Denver (who was already getting in my nerves) and —you can check this out!—Mitch Miller.
I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to their music. I considered folk music to be cotton candy and I was definitely into rock candy.
But there was a problem. When I was first learning guitar, “folk” songs—the ones from what Tom Lehrer called “The Great Folk Music Scare”—were where you cut your teeth on acoustic guitar. “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” “Puff the Magic Dragon,” were the learner’s repertoire.
The fact that I could sing and play guitar made me a minor celebrity in my extended family and at family gatherings and uncle or an aunt would invariably yell out:
“Hey John, play that hammer song … you know the bell and the oo-oo, or whatever the hell it is. Play that.”
“Play that” was never a request when it came from an adult.
When I bought my first electric guitar and figured out how to play “I Feel Fine,” I really did feel fine because I vowed that I would never play that “hammer” song again. Or any other folk music for that matter. Dylan beat me going electric by a bit; but like Dylan, I didn’t care what the audience thought. I was NOT going back to folk music.
III.
I had managed, almost, to entirely forget the song “If I had A Hammer.” Every once and a while, I’d get a whiff of one of the folks standards, a “mighty wind,” as Christopher Guest so perfectly captured it. “Give Peace a Chance,” John Lennon’s British import to the cause, would pop up now and again. Or the Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn,” which is exactly what I did to the radio dial when that song came on.
However …
As I arrived at my first second-administration demonstration, the “Hands Off’-themed rally in April of 2025, a sound became more and more clear as I made my way from my several-blocks-away parking space toward the Common where the demonstration was taking place, a sound slipped in and out of range. Guitars … yes, voices … yes, a fiddle … yes.
On my last turn, I faced the Common and ... (you’re probably ahead of me here, but I’ll say it anyway,
It was “If I had A Hammer.” The song I had tried to forget was baaaaccckkkk.
Now God bless the people who were on stage —all apparently 34 or 35 of them — singing and playing (in a manner of speaking) on their own time.
And, as I’m getting ready offer a few notes, know that I do this in the spirit of solidarity. Seriously. I mean that.
Here are my notes:
Note #1:
Eleven guitars, no matter what the occasion, are eight or nine too many.
Note #2:
Lose the music stands.
These songs have three, maybe four chords, and the lyrics are repetitive. All those music stands on the stage look like a traffic jam on the Cross-Bronx parkway.
Learn the song at home. Come in prepared. I’m begging you.
IV.
It is hard for Donald Trump to surprise me, here in the tenth year of his omnipresence. But the “Octagon” and “The Claw” on the White House lawn for a UFC fight (doesn’t everybody see Nero’s Rome here?) were a genuine surprise. It turns out that the septic tank he bobs around in is infinitely deep.
Speaking of the $700 million-dollar Ballroom (c’mon, you know it’s going to cost at least that much), DJT said:
“It’s a monument. I’m building a monument to myself—because no one else will.”
Finally, the man said something that was actually true.
So he gilds the Oval Office in tacky faux-gold leaf appliqué, creates an eyesore of a ballroom, wants to build a Napoleonic arch to himself, stick his name on everything that is not moving, (personally, I’d like to see TRUMP tattooed onto Stephen Miller’s head—in fact, why not use that for all senior-level collaborators? And we shall know them by their deeds.)
Everything he touches, before it dies, takes on the vulgar tackiness of an oily used-car salesman’s office, from the bauble-headed tchotchkes to paper-thin tee-shirts.
Basically, he’s turned Washington D.C. and parts of Florida into a low-rent Disneyland. If it were in Romania.
V.
The idea for this post …
… no doubt originated in one of those moments of incandescent rage I occasionally experience. But I could have just let it go, and probably would have until I saw him trying to crash the picture of the winning team from Spain.
Honestly, that lit me up like a Roman candle. Although I have but passing interest in soccer, I have tremendous respect for what it took for the Spanish team to get to stand on that stage. And then we have gauche, boorish Mr. T crash the picture. Even the Ultimate Toady, Gianni Infantino Pinocchio, knew Mr. T was out of line. But he couldn’t save the picture.
That was a job for Photoshop.
So here’s the deal.
We can’t use hammers or tattoos or virtually any of the things I’ve mentioned here, because violence is unacceptable and tattoos are … well, maybe the tattoo idea is okay.
But we are going to need something with which to release our rage.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Trump Piñata.
Everybody sing!
If I had a hammer
I’d hammer the piñata
I’d hammer the piñata all over the lawn
I’d hammer out lying
I’d hammer out cheating
I’d hammer out the harm he’s done
My brothers and my sisters all over this land.
I am only partly joking here. There has been a collective trauma from which it will take (a) time and (b) excellent strategies to process the grief, disillusionment and—yes—physical violence this period has created.
So, toward that end, let me quote another song:
People, Get Ready.🎶
Here is another piece in the ambient direction in which I’m heading. I hope you like it!
No paywall—ever. If this work speaks to you, share it.
Not only do we have the same taste in music (I loathed those same songs as a kid), but we experienced the Gaza pyramids together in what was an unforgettable trip (and not in a good way)! 😂😂😂