Aligning With a Deity

 Song 722: This week the playlist applauds With God on Our Side by Bob Dylan, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I learned Mr. Dylan's name soon after Peter, Paul and Mary got us riding along with Blowin' in the Wind, and then, by the time of my HS phase, I had noticed that moniker appearing on a bunch of other tunes I really relished, but I didn't actually hear his own versions until I got to college in the fall of 1969. I had a roommate change after the December recess, and with my new roommate being a big BD fan, I got to hear a lot of Bob's impressive lifts, and he quickly became possibly my top lyrical style inspiration. I added a few of his LPs to my collection, including the one that featured this hymn, and they all got plenty of spins on the turntable. In my years growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I had also learned to hate the Russians, and I believed that the Germans had God on their side, though I later found out that during WWII, the soldiers saluting the swastika regularly wore belt buckles that had the phrase Gott Mit Uns on them, and I don't think they actually had God on their side then. Understanding that for the last 6 decades the U.S., Russia and China have all had large nuclear weapons arsenals, and that the use of too big a portion of just one of those stockpiles could potentially end human civilization on our planet, I strongly agree with Bob that if God's on our side he'll stop the next war!