US Sec of State Blinken Sings Anti-War Song in Ukraine Capital

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in a scripted visit to Kiev, Ukraine played Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” without understanding that it is an anti-war song. 

Blinken (62) wearing a tucked-in black shirt and blue jeans, and strumming a candy-apple red Epiphone guitar, jammed at Kiev’s legendary Barman Dictat basement dive with local band 19.99 to show support for young people fighting and dying for Ukraine.   

Blinken, whose nickname in college band was “spanky banana” lectured the crowd of mostly Western media, “I know this is a really, really difficult time. Your soldiers, your citizens, particularly in the northeast in Kharkiv, are suffering tremendously.”  He egotistically pontificated: “But they need to know, you need to know, the United States is with you. They’re fighting not just for a free Ukraine but for the free world.”

The stoic Harvard and Columbia University graduate, tried to pump up the crowd by belting out “Rockin’ in the Free World.”  But Blinken’s choice of music immediately caused a firestorm of criticism and disgust for not knowing that Neil Young’s 1989 hit was an indictment of America’s failings, including homelessness and gun crime.

According to American Songwriter, Young and guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro were talking about all the Cold War military turmoil world while on tour with his band The Restless in early 1989.  They ended up writing “Rockin’ in the Free World” as their response to President George W. Bush’s inaugural address hypocrisy for promising that America to would become a “kinder, gentler nation”—We got 1,000 points of light. 

“Rockin’ in the Free World” was meant to be a sarcastic look at the Cold War false patriotism that commanded the world conform to America’s dictates, despite substantial U.S. poverty—“people sleeping in their shoes,” drug addiction, child welfare neglect, and ecological blight: 

“… I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
There’s an old streetlight (near a garbage can)
Near a garbage can (near a garbage can)
And now she put the kid away and she’s gone to get a hit
She hates her life and what she’s done to it
There’s one more kid that’ll never go to school
Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool

For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand
We got department stores and toilet paper
Got Styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive”