The other night, I watched a Michael Moore documentary about George Bush. There’s this one scene featuring with a mother from Flint, Michigan. She’s on the couch, surrounded by her family, recounting the devastating phone call where she found out her son had been killed in Iraq. She couldn’t get the words out.

For some reason while I was watching this the lyrics from Dave Van Ronk’s “Samson and Delilah” started playing in my head, specifically that one refrain: "If I had my way…if If I had my way in this wicked world…if I had my way, I would tear this building down." There’s this sense of hopeless fury — all the lives lost in Iraq, sacrificed on the altar of corporate interests and oil tycoons, the sumptuous buffet at the investor meetings, the rundown, forgotten city of Flint, this mother’s home with almost a dozen kids.

That forlorn refrain, it’s in this mother’s tears, it’s in this new blue collar anthem. The anger of the forgotten working man (from a long tradition of forgotten and exploited Americans — the munitions factory workers, the coal miners, the gold miners, the frontiersman, the indentured servants) most of the college-educated urbanites I tend to associate with tend to forget or ignore or even denounce. These are the enlightened people who claim to be empathetic and yet dismiss the lived experience, the suffering of half of the country. They call them racist or homophobic and feel quite righteous in their ignorance.

From a practical perspective, these neo-elites are making a critical strategic error in their neglect of this furious contingent with an (and I’m really not dramatizing much here) ancient warrior ethos. How do I know this? It’s right there in The Dave Van Ronk song.

Read about Samson, read about his birth Well, now, Samson was the strongest man who walked on Earth Well, now, one day Samson was-a-walkin' along He looked on the ground and saw an old jawbone Well, he raised that bone, God knows, over his head And when he was through ten-thousand was dead

If I had my way If I had my way in this wicked world If I had my way I would tear this building down

Well, now, Samson and Delilah got attacked Samson climbed up upon that lion's back Well, you read about this lion, killed a man with his paws But Samson got his hand around that lion's jaws Well, he rode that beast until he killed him dead And the bees made honey in the lion's head

If I had my way If I had my way in this wicked world If I had my way I would tear this building down

Well, Delilah was a woman, she was fine and fair She had lovely looks, God knows, and coal black hair Well, Delilah come into Samson's mind The first he saw this woman of the Philistines Well, Delilah climbed up on Samson's knee Said tell me where your strength lies if you please Well she talked so fine, God knows, she talked so fair Well, now, Samson said "Delilah, you can shave my hair You can shave my hair, just as clean as your hand And my strength will be that of a natural man"

If I had my way If I had my way in this wicked world If I had my way I would tear this building down

If I had my way If I had my way in this wicked world If I had my way I would tear this building down

We see in the story of Samson (as in many other old fables and children stories) not just the story of a man but a societal ark, a *saeculum *as Neil Howe (or a Roman) would put it. There are seasons to history.

Now Van Ronk doesn’t tell the story with any sort of biblical accuracy (Samson killed the lion first then slayed the Philisitines with a jawbone not the other way around; he didn’t encounter the lion with Delilah, he was alone; etc.) but who cares it was a myth then and is now, and the beauty of myth is that it morphs and changes overtime from one bard to the next.

Samson was born into a time of chaos and division, of constant conflict between the Israelites and the Philistines. This is late fall, the unraveling. Samson possesses exceptional strength and being born in this time is destined to take on the generational and archetypal role of the hero. In an unraveling, vengeance trumps all reason as each party’s vindictiveness swells with every new offense. The escalating division is only quelled when one party undeniably asserts its authority over the other, as Samson did when he killed 1,000 (not 10,000) Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey.

Next comes a crisis — winter — when there is a clear enemy who poses an existential threat. The lion Samson encounters has killed before, and there is no hesitation when Samson leaps onto its back to slay it. This is the total war, the war to end all wars, and the outcome results in the death and punishment of the loser and celebration of and spoils for the victor: the bees making honey in the lion’s head. Such spoils benefit all — Samson bring honey back to share with his parents — and mark the beginning of a new golden age, the dawn of spring.

This is the time to quit fighting, settle down, and fall in love, and Samson does exactly that when he goes to Gaza and meets the dark-haired Delilah. He cannot catch a break though and this spring quickly turns to the corruption of summer when rulers of the Philistines come to Delilah and offer her 1,100 shekels each if she is able to discover the secret of Samson’s strength. This is the age of awakening, when the old system — which had previously triumphed over existential threats and brought prosperity for all — stagnates and and the probing and nagging of a love-wielding, sexual, youthful generation (often backed by financial speculators) peacefully disarms the establishment (remind you of something?).

So he — blinded by love, by abundance, by comfort — reveals the source of his power, his hair, which is cut in the night and Samson’s eyes are gouged out (so he can no longer see things as they truly are, all is hearsay and delusion) and he is enslaved and imprisoned, forced to grind grain like a donkey [1].

So we return to fall but in its earlier stages — the unequal harvest — when labor power is sold, the people are deceived into monotonous toil for the benefit of a 1,100-shekel-investor class. Love and sex are manipulated for personal gain. Lies and cynicism proliferate. All is unjust and unequal and rotten.

The song ends not with the actual conclusion of the story of Samson: when he, after imploring to God, miraculously regains his strength and tears down the Philistine temple, killing 3,000 of them and himself in the process; but only the longing to do so. We can imagine him singing the “if I had my way” refrain as he is grinding away in prison.

Millions of Americans are singing that refrain today: they’re working “overtime hours for bullshit pay,” they’ve seen all the fruits of empire go to a fractional elite while their children fight and die for acres of desert and barrels of oil, they’ve gone to the cities seeking relationships and finding only situationships, they’ve seen love degrade into manipulation, they’ve been appeased with the material comforts of just-in-time supply chains and cheap plastic goods while any sense of purpose has been eaten away by cynicism and filled with fentanyl. Even the corporate college-educated types who are supposed to be improving the world feel more like blind-donkeys on the grindstone.

There are many young Samsons among us who have heard the stories of their forefathers, of the great generation that endured hunger and depression and united to fight a common evil and existential enemy, who long to do the same. Still, in some saecula that enemy is without, in others that enemy is within — sometimes in a wicked world the only option is to tear this building down.

Now for any of those dismissive elite types, you see why it is a mistake to ignore this Samsonite contingent [2], because the way things go from here has already been written, and (if nothing is done to address the underlying drivers of this immiseration process) it’s not looking good for the wealthy Philistines.

This may seem bleak, but what I find most reassuring, is that this cycle does not stop, there’s no final apocalypse: out of such destruction and calamity new lions will need to be slayed, new honey to eat, love to make, and temples to build; when the temple falls and the trees burn, there appear the seeds of new growth and life.

[1]: Notice the mirroring with the earlier donkey jawbone: he once used the dead as a weapon, now he has become the walking dead.

[2]: And when I say “Samsonite” I do not mean the fucking luggage brand!

The other night, I watched a Michael Moore documentary about George Bush. There’s this one scene featuring with a mother from Flint, Michigan. She’s on the couch, surrounded by her family, recounting the devastating phone call where she found out her son had been killed in Iraq. She couldn’t get the words out.

For some reason while I was watching this the lyrics from Dave Van Ronk’s “Samson and Delilah” started playing in my head, specifically that one refrain: "If I had my way…if If I had my way in this wicked world…if I had my way, I would tear this building down." There’s this sense of hopeless fury — all the lives lost in Iraq, sacrificed on the altar of corporate interests and oil tycoons, the sumptuous buffet at the investor meetings, the rundown, forgotten city of Flint, this mother’s home with almost a dozen kids.

That forlorn refrain, it’s in this mother’s tears, it’s in this new blue collar anthem. The anger of the forgotten working man (from a long tradition of forgotten and exploited Americans — the munitions factory workers, the coal miners, the gold miners, the frontiersman, the indentured servants) most of the college-educated urbanites I tend to associate with tend to forget or ignore or even denounce. These are the enlightened people who claim to be empathetic and yet dismiss the lived experience, the suffering of half of the country. They call them racist or homophobic and feel quite righteous in their ignorance.

From a practical perspective, these neo-elites are making a critical strategic error in their neglect of this furious contingent with an (and I’m really not dramatizing much here) ancient warrior ethos. How do I know this? It’s right there in The Dave Van Ronk song.

Read about Samson, read about his birth Well, now, Samson was the strongest man who walked on Earth Well, now, one day Samson was-a-walkin' along He looked on the ground and saw an old jawbone Well, he raised that bone, God knows, over his head And when he was through ten-thousand was dead

If I had my way If I had my way in this wicked world If I had my way I would tear this building down

Well, now, Samson and Delilah got attacked Samson climbed up upon that lion's back Well, you read about this lion, killed a man with his paws But Samson got his hand around that lion's jaws Well, he rode that beast until he killed him dead And the bees made honey in the lion's head

If I had my way If I had my way in this wicked world If I had my way I would tear this building down

Well, Delilah was a woman, she was fine and fair She had lovely looks, God knows, and coal black hair Well, Delilah come into Samson's mind The first he saw this woman of the Philistines Well, Delilah climbed up on Samson's knee Said tell me where your strength lies if you please Well she talked so fine, God knows, she talked so fair Well, now, Samson said "Delilah, you can shave my hair You can shave my hair, just as clean as your hand And my strength will be that of a natural man"

If I had my way If I had my way in this wicked world If I had my way I would tear this building down

If I had my way If I had my way in this wicked world If I had my way I would tear this building down

We see in the story of Samson (as in many other old fables and children stories) not just the story of a man but a societal ark, a *saeculum *as Neil Howe (or a Roman) would put it. There are seasons to history.

Now Van Ronk doesn’t tell the story with any sort of biblical accuracy (Samson killed the lion first then slayed the Philisitines with a jawbone not the other way around; he didn’t encounter the lion with Delilah, he was alone; etc.) but who cares it was a myth then and is now, and the beauty of myth is that it morphs and changes overtime from one bard to the next.

Samson was born into a time of chaos and division, of constant conflict between the Israelites and the Philistines. This is late fall, the unraveling. Samson possesses exceptional strength and being born in this time is destined to take on the generational and archetypal role of the hero. In an unraveling, vengeance trumps all reason as each party’s vindictiveness swells with every new offense. The escalating division is only quelled when one party undeniably asserts its authority over the other, as Samson did when he killed 1,000 (not 10,000) Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey.

Next comes a crisis — winter — when there is a clear enemy who poses an existential threat. The lion Samson encounters has killed before, and there is no hesitation when Samson leaps onto its back to slay it. This is the total war, the war to end all wars, and the outcome results in the death and punishment of the loser and celebration of and spoils for the victor: the bees making honey in the lion’s head. Such spoils benefit all — Samson bring honey back to share with his parents — and mark the beginning of a new golden age, the dawn of spring.

This is the time to quit fighting, settle down, and fall in love, and Samson does exactly that when he goes to Gaza and meets the dark-haired Delilah. He cannot catch a break though and this spring quickly turns to the corruption of summer when rulers of the Philistines come to Delilah and offer her 1,100 shekels each if she is able to discover the secret of Samson’s strength. This is the age of awakening, when the old system — which had previously triumphed over existential threats and brought prosperity for all — stagnates and and the probing and nagging of a love-wielding, sexual, youthful generation (often backed by financial speculators) peacefully disarms the establishment (remind you of something?).

So he — blinded by love, by abundance, by comfort — reveals the source of his power, his hair, which is cut in the night and Samson’s eyes are gouged out (so he can no longer see things as they truly are, all is hearsay and delusion) and he is enslaved and imprisoned, forced to grind grain like a donkey [1].

So we return to fall but in its earlier stages — the unequal harvest — when labor power is sold, the people are deceived into monotonous toil for the benefit of a 1,100-shekel-investor class. Love and sex are manipulated for personal gain. Lies and cynicism proliferate. All is unjust and unequal and rotten.

The song ends not with the actual conclusion of the story of Samson: when he, after imploring to God, miraculously regains his strength and tears down the Philistine temple, killing 3,000 of them and himself in the process; but only the longing to do so. We can imagine him singing the “if I had my way” refrain as he is grinding away in prison.

Millions of Americans are singing that refrain today: they’re working “overtime hours for bullshit pay,” they’ve seen all the fruits of empire go to a fractional elite while their children fight and die for acres of desert and barrels of oil, they’ve gone to the cities seeking relationships and finding only situationships, they’ve seen love degrade into manipulation, they’ve been appeased with the material comforts of just-in-time supply chains and cheap plastic goods while any sense of purpose has been eaten away by cynicism and filled with fentanyl. Even the corporate college-educated types who are supposed to be improving the world feel more like blind-donkeys on the grindstone.

There are many young Samsons among us who have heard the stories of their forefathers, of the great generation that endured hunger and depression and united to fight a common evil and existential enemy, who long to do the same. Still, in some saecula that enemy is without, in others that enemy is within — sometimes in a wicked world the only option is to tear this building down.

Now for any of those dismissive elite types, you see why it is a mistake to ignore this Samsonite contingent [2], because the way things go from here has already been written, and (if nothing is done to address the underlying drivers of this immiseration process) it’s not looking good for the wealthy Philistines.

This may seem bleak, but what I find most reassuring, is that this cycle does not stop, there’s no final apocalypse: out of such destruction and calamity new lions will need to be slayed, new honey to eat, love to make, and temples to build; when the temple falls and the trees burn, there appear the seeds of new growth and life.

[1]: Notice the mirroring with the earlier donkey jawbone: he once used the dead as a weapon, now he has become the walking dead.

[2]: And when I say “Samsonite” I do not mean the fucking luggage brand!