Part two is here.

That’s what history always does, of course, though it must hurt to just feel that one is in the way.

Also stepping aside is “They Mayor of America”, now no longer seeking the Republican nomination. Despite his leadership after 9/11, and his record as Mayor of New York, after reading pieces like this one in the N. Y. Times, I’m not surprised.

The remaining Republican candidates are much less complex figures in many ways, and stand a much better chance against a Clinton or Obama campaign, either of whom the Republicans will want to be able to paint as “divisive”. Giuliani, for all his strengths, simply isn’t what the Republican party needs for this election.

And if you enjoyed that, you’ll enjoy this follow-up segment well.

I’m just trying to be a father,
Raise a daughter and a son,
Be a lover to their mother,
Everything to everyone.

Even in the middle of the song, lyrics such as “I just work straight through the holidays // And sometimes all night long,” pick up on the theme of the struggling, hard-working man trying to provide for his family that is common to so many “Country Music” songs.

The “soldier” emerges from the song as simply an even more idealised version of the self-sufficient, self-sacrificing, honour-bound American man than the one to be found in many a song about American life in the West. Indeed, in other versions of the lyrics that are to be found online, which describe the arrival of the letter calling him to duty, or indeed in the video that accompanies the song, the notion of a man plucked from America’s West is made explicit.

It is an old, old theme in American culture: the citizen going off to fight for freedom, and at the same time perfecting, testing and proving himself. Americans are and want to be proud of their armed forces, in a way that perhaps no other nation is. To much of America, if not, perhaps, as often to the sections of the coastal populations that most usually have contact with Europeans, they represent an ideal.

It is a measure of the complexity of American attitudes in this area that Keith himself calls himself a “Conservative Democrat” who supported the re-election of George Bush and who, despite claiming not to have supported the War in Iraq, is not likely to be supportive of a weak foreign policy, and buys completely into the idea that a strong American military underpins American peace and freedom.

In the song he wrote after 9/11, which honours in part his father, who had been wounded during his time in the military:

American girls and American guys will always stand up and salute;
Will always recognize
When we see ol’ glory flying,
There’s a lot of men dead,
So we can sleep in peace at night when we lay down our head.
….
Oh, Justice will be served and the battle will rage.
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage
You’ll be sorry that you messed with the US of A
‘Cuz we’ll put a boot in your ass
It’s the American way.
…
And it’ll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you…
Brought to you courtesy of the Red, White and Blue!

Europeans may prefer Janis Ian’s “Heart of the City,” a defiant but not aggressive song, but Keith’s response is more reflective of American sentiment.