Leonard Cohen Predicted Trump

He saw "The Future." Now: Trump's scariest quote ever this weekend. Plus a dozen hot cartoons.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books (see link) and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre” which are still up at PBS.org. Watch trailer for my acclaimed 2025 film “The Atomic Bowl.” Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. At Blue Sky and Twitter: both as @gregmitch. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for FREE.

On Truth Social earlier today:

Important comment on this by Kyle Clark, an journalist in Denver who has long covered American extremists: " I think it’s a mistake to view Trump’s Napoleonic statement as solely about presidential power. Consider if it’s interpreted as a wink and a nod for any extremist to act outside the law to ‘save’ the country as they see fit.” Let me add: along with pardoning all of the January 6 “extremists.”

Well, Leonard Cohen, as often true, called it in his song “The Future.” Partial lyrics below and live version of song. Let me say I have never been a fan of Robert Christgau but I did appreciate this photo of him in this t-shirt which painfully reminds me that Leonard’s death was announced the day after Trump was elected in 2016.

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul

When they said repent repent
I wonder what they meant?

Your servant here, he has been told
To say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
Any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
It is murder

And, of course, more from Leonard:

Everybody knows the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

The Future? Time Has Come Today

I highly recommend that if you can’t read the text below in this brilliant Joe Sacco and Art “Maus” Spieglman page that you enlarge it so that you can. From the new New York Review of Books.