This Machine Kills Facists - Woody Guthrie and Whitman

Nice post on Guthrie.  I have had minimal exposure to Guthrie and enjoyed both passages in your prompt.  It seems to me that Guthrie, like Whitman, loves the “idea” (or potential) of America but is dismayed by the “execution” of America (by execution I mean the manner of performance, not putting to death).  Start with the Pastures of Plenty lyrics.  I feel a number of competing sentiments embedded within the song.  While Guthrie highlights the diversity and fecundity of the land, you feel a sense of him being controlled by the land, or by those that control the land.  In some ways, the song feels like a slave work song, particularly the opening lines.  The “you” in the lyrics seems to stretch beyond its initial meaning of America or individual states, and to individual owners of certain pieces of the land.  When Guthrie sings “We’ll work in this fight and we’ll fight till we win,” the target of this fight is nebulous but my sense is that Guthrie is lamenting the intermediation of the proverbial “man” in his association with the land of America.  Thus when he speaks of the freedom he is willing to fight for in the closing lines of the song, he is not referring to foreigners or other outside forces but those among us who look to disturb the natural connection between humanity and our desire to work.  This Land is Your Land works in a similar manner.  The song begins with an ode to the land of America and a celebration of our shared identity with the land, and ends by questioning the current status of that identity.  He again ends the song with a statement of defiance (“Nobody living can ever stop me”) as he looks to reestablish that which, in his mind, made the land of America great in the first place.