If you didn’t know it was an album from Taylor Swift and just read the lyrics or heard them sung acoustic, it sounds like a mid-2000s emo album to me.

I am a man in my 30s, and this album made me realize that her music has been the emo band for a different demographic of the same post 9/11 generation this entire time.

PART 1

In order to explain why I think “Tortured Poets Department (Punk Rock Version)” should exist I need to share the name Justin Cathal Geever (google that name only if you currently have the emotional capacity to read about trauma and abuse) and mention punk rock’s METOO moment in the summer of 2023, during the height of Eras Tour in America.

The name in bold is someone who fled the country to avoid justice, I will not be using their stage name….I’m only using the name that is on customs documents to separate the stage persona from the real person.

<-— That point about customs documents isn’t a throwaway line for me, Justin Cathal Geever is famous and there are many situations that require someone to have their ID checked.

I had been planning to do a diary about using Amish and Quaker religious influence to counter Christo-Fascism and this whole time I hadn’t realize that a band I enjoyed had already used “The Amish Tactic”….shunning. The band dissolved and the record label is “unwinding”.

I’ll come back to Justin later, this diary will be like the lead story on TRMS, the history journey and the pieces are important, very few people have the knowledge of punk culture/history so it needs to be long and….PUNKS ARE MOST USEFUL DEMOGRAPHIC IN THIS MOMENT.

If you’ve been on the streets marching or protesting you’ve seen this, they just all looked like different groups of people to you if you haven’t been to a punk show.

PUNK IS ATTITUDE, NOT A MUSIC GENRE, FASHION STYLE, OR IDEOLOGY.

BEING PUNK IS BEING A DAVID IN A WORLD OF GOLIATHS.

Punks didn’t spend their teenage years playing games behind screens, they spent them in mosh pits. They actively sought out what Tim McIlrath, lead singer of Rise Against, has described as “uncomfortable spaces”, places that allowed us to learn new things and meet different types of people.

We did this, not what our parents may have wished us to spend our time doing in high school and college. We learned new things, we didn’t exclusively read old books.

YOU MIGHT NOT UNDERSTAND OR THINK YOU HAVE ANYTHING IN COMMON WITH PUNKS, BUT THEY ARE YOUR BIGGEST ALLY RIGHT NOW.

If you are feeling alone in your community, please attend a punk show.

Not for the music, for the people. If you’ve ever been to a punk/metal show (or seen video), you’ve seen a mini-intermission where someone on stage says “When someone falls down you pick them up” that’s not for you or for a first timer.

It’s a reminder that we all can get caught up in the moment, and we should remember to take care of each other. It’s pure empathy, baby.

If you are feeling alone in your community for whatever reason, go to a punk show, punk club, punk dive bar, whatever is punk in your hometown.

Concerts are best because the merch table is the water cooler of empathy in your town. If at a concert, go to the merch table and say “It’s my first time at a punk show, I care about ____(your cause here), how can I get involved locally or what bands care about my cause?” if you aren’t at a concert ask the other person what injustice in the world brought them to punk rock.

It doesn’t matter what you wear, what you look like, or even how wealthy you are when you are inside the walls of a punk club.

Punk venues, be they coffeeshops, record stores, dive bars, themed restaurants, or live music venues all live the truth that Olive Garden used as a slogan… “When you’re here….you’re family. The secular version of “blood is thicker than water”. Religious folks like to use that quote as a weapon against their family members, here’s the full version:

“The blood of the sacrament is thicker than the water of the womb”

The full phrase refers to the communion with people who share a common goal or set of beliefs which is more important than the family legacy you have been born into with original sin.

You have freewill and get to have a choice in your friends as your grow up. You are not bound to the blood ties of your past, you were reborn in the womb.

That’s what “born again” is supposed to mean. Not some religious purity test, or political badge, it means you get to be your own person and believe what you think is best given how the world changed as you grew up. Time marches ever forward, so your values should reflect the times.

This is also the meaning behind “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”….that’s the separation of church and state written into the bible itself. It means pay your taxes, but influence the world in a more religious way as you do, it doesn’t mean create a religious theocracy to abolish taxes.

The Jesus at the temple thing was also about the wealthy nobles and political corruption, not about tax collectors, tax collectors were the Oligarchy of ancient Rome.

Take a look inside the pandora’s box MAGA has opened, don’t ignore the tools they left behind and don’t be afraid to engage in the same tactics until the box of dangerous objects is closed again.

Free speech and fuck their feelings all day, everyday from now on. Don’t want to be called a Nazi….don’t support Nazis. It’s the transitive property of shit-baggery. Not a real math property, but let’s be honest, MAGA doesn’t believe in math anyway.

What I mean by fuck their feelings is that their vote for Trump should be like the mark Lt. Aldo Raine gives the bad guys in “Inglorious Basterds”.

Until the constitution and checks and balances are restored, every social interaction you have with MAGA voters should be a reminder that right now, in this moment they can renounce their ways and return home in a prodigal son way, but soon their vote will be a “uniform you can’t take off” to paraphrase the film.

The icons of MAGA fashion-ware should go into the closets, the people should be out of the closets. When I say fuck their feelings, that’s what I mean. A MAGA hat should appear in your minds eye as though it reads; “MY WIFE STAYS YOUNG LOOKING BY DRINKING THE BLOOD OF DEPORTED IMMIGRANT CHILDREN”….I know that’s more words that can fit on a hat, but that should be your emotional reaction to seeing it in public.

Also, that particular phrase was chosen because of how it ties the Pizzagate obsession to Elizabeth Báthory, a Hungarian noblewoman in the 1500s. And she was chosen because Slovakia is close to Slovenia. Slovenia is where Melania is from, and she acts like Elizabeth Báthory.

Trump is feeble-minded I bet he’d confuse the two countries. Not only does it highlight the Robber Baron 2.0 gilded age wealth disparity, it connects to history, and has potential for a Trump tongue twister blunder which would strengthen bonds between the individuals of European countries, regardless of what those nations do in Ukraine.

If you are or have been a resident of Idaho, Iowa, or Ohio you understand how this might strengthen the European peoples in a time when they are actively being divided.

The combination of “Learn to Read” and “Learn to Map” is rage inducing and forms a weird bond between citizens of these confused places.

That is useful to this geopolitical moment. The more Trump is viewed as a bumbling fuck-up internationally the better for us, instead of being view as part of the new Axis powers, we can be a toddler at the timeout table until the next presidential election.

Being isolated is better than being on the wrong side of history and we can make a very visible sign to our allies.

The left has marched for peace in modern times….What if we plan marches in America for “No Peace in Ukraine”? What if we wear white all the time?  What if we wear white in support of peace, but only for a peace that includes the people of Ukraine and greater Europe. This again, is not a random choice, but related to the visual impact it would make.

White Supremacy is dumb and I genuinely don’t understand the underlying motivations, but I do know that who and what it considered “white” is very important to the Tucker Carlson/JD Vance types.

What if all the “wrong people” wore white, and only white as much as possible? We mourn democracy not with black but with white.

We can’t change our stripes, our spots, our skin colors, or our gender or sexual orientation…..we can change what it means to be “white” and what “whiteness” represents.

Nothing feels more punk rock to me, and nothing would upset them more than losing their favorite racist wedge. If white means something opposite to their worldview, they need to pick something else. It’s the ultimate passive-aggressive move.

White also ties to the suffragette movement in Europe in a way that would be rage inducing for misogynists. We make them mad by being passive.

The founding fathers engaged in a punk rock act, throwing tea into a harbor and then declaring their independence.

MAGA has been telling us for years that America has lost its way, so let’s kick it super old school…..after all unlike the founding fathers, we aren’t engaged in acts of rebellion, we are simply doing what we are told, correct?

Note regarding the header photo: I cropped from the original source, I specifically wanted to avoid a sexualized image for this topic and as stated above regarding stand up jokes, I have little visual art skills.

If someone has proper attribution for this or similar artwork created yourself I will update the attribution and/or photo.