An Auspicious Moon

A New Album, Thoughts on Iran, &tc.

Dear Friends,

I am enjoying a week off from my regular everyday employment and the exciting news is that The Bailey Band is officially back in the studio to record our sophomore album. We are just at the beginning stages of laying down tracks and building the sonic bone structure of these songs. We are very excited about it, but bear with us because these things take time to do it right. We are learning to engineer the recording ourselves and there’s a bit of a learning curve. But we do have superb equipment and elite instruments and are pleased with the product so far.

This album is named after its title track, “Let Me Be The Moon,” and it was an excellent omen that on the first day of principal recording the most amazing moon shone its face on us.

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Naturally, that has kept me pretty busy, so keeping up with the rapid pace of world events has been difficult. I have purposely not chimed in with my hot take on our military engagement with Iran. But I do have a few considered thoughts.

Much like eating a steady diet of cotton candy will rot your teeth, a steady diet of cable news and social media—and the resultant partisan mentality—will rot your brain. Watching longtime Iran hawks suddenly appalled at our intervention simply because President Trump did it is incredible. I have said it before: Trump Derangement Syndrome is a real thing. (It just doesn’t apply to everything.) Likewise, watching longtime foreign policy doves, opponents of "foreign adventures” and “foreverwars” suddenly beating their chests in patriotic pride and gratitude for Trump’s total and absolute contradiction of his campaign promises, simply because it is Donald Trump, is incredible. There’s just a shortage of honest people in American public life.

I have been keenly aware for nearly the whole of my life that we are in a state of conflict with the Iranian regime—ever since the Revolution and the kidnapping of 66 Americans from our embassy in 1979. They have been the world’s largest exporter of terrorism for decades, and their stated aims are the eradication of Israel and “death to America.” The regime is an Islamic tyranny with no concept of civil liberties; they brutally oppress their own people and recently gunned down in the streets thousands of protestors.

I shed no tears for the death of the Ayatollah and the dismantling of the apparatus of the Iranian state, and rejoice with the Persian people for their liberation, if this be, in fact, their liberation.