https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQSGLVJU8p4
The fact that one of my favorite first-wave punk songs is expressed as an attempt to start a dialogue, though, hints at the real mismatch between me and punk rock: I don't, anymore, do self-righteous anger well. I used to, and certainly there are no shortage of worthy targets: too many of the world's nations are run by rank-hungry sociopaths, too much of its land and air and water is churned through in the ruthless pursuit of short-term private economic profit, and too much of its culture is run by cowards terrified of funding anything but the latest escapist sequel to an escapist sequel that had already lost whatever spark of individuation it began with. Anger is, as Johnny Rotten observed, an energy, and some extraordinary people (I.F. Stone, Lyndon Johnson, Ralph Nader, Walter Reuther, Catherine MacKinnon, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, Greg Palast, Glenn Greenwald, to name some post-WWII Americans) have clearly found it an endlessly renewable one -- but in my body it burns up too quickly, and gives off toxic pollutants. So even if I try to focus on the evils of the other, rueful awareness of my own imperfections gets in the way, or I veer off topic and find myself more interested in the good things about my allies than in the bad things I'm supposed to be fighting.
I was a low-level community organizer once, in poor areas around Boston. I was okay at it -- helped one neighborhood get streets full of horrible potholes repaired after a decade-plus of being ignored, helped another get some traffic enforcement on cars racing 50 mph through streets that were the only place their kids could play -- but the relentless earnestness and long hours made me miserable, and I doubt I could do it again any time soon. Too, I could try to be punk rock, but I would probably come out more like the Sundays' "Hideous Towns".