In 1965 Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the giant hit song made popular by singer Jackie Deshannon , What the World Needs Now is Love. I enclose the lyrics:

What the World Needs Now Is Love

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing, that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love,
No, not just for some, but for everyone

Lord we don’t need another mountain
There are mountains and hillsides
Enough to climb
There are oceans and rivers,
Enough to cross, enough to last till the end of time

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some, but for everyone

Lord, we don’t need another meadow
There are cornfields and wheat fields
Enough to grow
There are sunbeams and moonbeams
Enough to shine
Oh listen Lord, if you want to know

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some,
But for everyone

With all the divisiveness, politically and culturally, throughout the entire industrialized world, we sure need what the song expresses. Instead, those who voted in many nations, including ours, have chosen leaders from, as we said in the Brooklyn, NYC of my youth, ‘ The wrong side of the street.’ Many citizens of all those nations wanted a leader, even a savior, to show them the way. One should read Eric Kurlander’s 2017 book Hitler’s Monsters, to get a handle on this whole messiah thing. When Adolf Hitler climbed his way into power, he had the help of the mass yearnings of the German populace. Beaten down by what many called the ‘ Versailles Dictat’ ( AKA Treaty) at the end of WW1 propaganda appeared through the Nazi Party that this all occurred due to a secret cabal of Jews, Masons and Communists. The German public had always been receptive to the occult and had deep fears of, as Kurlander puts it, ‘ Ministrations of ancient secret societies, such as those of the Masons, the Jews and the Jesuits’.

Hitler could exploit the popular desire, especially from those on the right wing, including working class folks, for a strong Fuhrer. The nation at that time, being strangled through the Diktat’s order for reparations and surrender of land to the victors, had become almost obsessed with the need for a savior. Hitler used this to continue, even early on in his climb to power, his place as a prophet and messiah. Famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called this mass need for a savior as indicative of people with an ‘ Inferiority Complex’. He went on to say that like the ‘ medicine man, the mystic, the seer, Hitler appeared to be sensitive to all his nation was feeling. He was able to tell the German people ‘ Simply what they wanted to hear’.

Here in our country, isn’t that what Donald Trump has succeeded in doing, not once but twice? Alas, history does have this magic moment of repeating itself, and many times not for good. Let’s finally change the lyrics to that hit song to What the World Needs Now is Trump Trump Trump! So sad.

PA Farruggio
January 14th 2025