Today is a good day to salute another, newly christened Nobel laureate who stood up to the war machine, telling the "Masters of War" that he could "see through [their] masks"; that "even Jesus would never forgive what you do."
The song was released in 1963, when the antiwar movement in the US was still very small. But millions would hear it, and along with other songs that he wrote and recorded, it would undoubtedly contribute to that movement and its consciousness.
Probably it won't get a lot of play in the stories about Dylan winning the Nobel Prize. At the moment, the level of media brainwashing on these issues is rather high, with 80 percent of voters in a recent survey saying they thought terrorism was "very important" to their 2016 vote -- second only to the economy, at 84 percent. Since you are much more likely to get killed by lightning than die at the hands of a terrorist, it is no exaggeration to say that the mass media has managed to create a literally delusional reality for millions of Americans.
It is hard to imagine Dylan or his fans buying into this kind of delusion, any more than they bought the official story that the Vietnam War was about saving the world from Communism. At the time of the song, however, the majority of the country did buy the official story and supported the war. This would change considerably in the ensuing years.
The delusions about terrorism, and about America's current, never-ending wars and foreign policy that are much more the cause of terrorism than a response to it, will also be shattered in the years ahead. "Masters of War" should be part of every broadcast about Dylan's Nobel Prize.
This post first appeared on Mark Weisbrot's blog "The World in Transition: Economics & Politics."
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and the president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of the new book "Failed: What the 'Experts' Got Wrong About the Global Economy" (2015, Oxford University Press). This post first appeared on his blog The World in Transition: Economics & Politics. You can subscribe to his columns here.