Posted On: Tuesday - September 15th 2026 2:22PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Music ctrl-left
Peak Stupidity features a whole bunch of music on this blog, most of it great rock songs from what now seems only an anomaly, that great 1960s through '90s era. OTOH, we've long been sick of the musicians who feel it's their job to mouth off about politics during their concerts. "Shut up, and sing!" is the standard reaction, one I might have come to myself had I the opportunity.
Great Irish rock band U2's lead singer John O'Bonohan, no, actually Paul David Hewson (however you get "Bono" out of that!), aka, Bono, is a musician we called out at the beginning of this blog. The post, from nearly 10 years back(!), was Bono, you'd be serving up
Bono is a great rock singer, yet U2 would have been nothing without the great guitar sound of The Edge, also not his birth name. He's David Howell
Now, let’s bring up this Bono again a decade later. I want to thank Unz Review commenter MEH for posting a version of U2's Gloria from their June '83 show in the scenic amphitheater at Red Rocks, Colorado. That was in response to a memory of mine of Bono yelling "This is Red Rocks! It rocks!" I’d forgotten how great that live album, Under a Blood Red Sky, was. I had it on cassette for years. That got me started...
Bono has been political for nearly the whole time I’ve known of U-2. Some of the band’s early songs were about Irish political causes. Sunday, Bloody Sunday was about “The Troubles”, as was Peace on Earth. Their long played hit New Year's Day*, that I'd always thought to be about some Irish thing - I mean, who really listens to lyrics? - is said to be about the anti-Communist Polish "Solidarity" movement and its leader Lech Walesa. That's pretty cool.
Then, Bono sang Pride (In the Name of Love), lyrically all bent out of shape about the death of some Communist race hustler years before. After that, U2 played in the HUGE “Live Aid” concert 41 years ago. The musicians/bands were there raising money to help out starving Ethiopians. Bono’s causes since then have been AIDS in Africa, poverty in Africa, everything about Africans and nothing more about Irishmen.
Here we must, of course, insert this standard Bono joke, not of our own making:
Bono got onto a rant about world hunger in the 2nd set between Sunday, Bloody Sunday and Where the Streets Have No Name:No, that wasn't me, but just after this time, in the late 1980s, I was on a tour of my own, of Europe. That was with a backpack and a rail and youth hostel pass. I didn't play any music on this tour besides playing someone's guitar for a bit at a pub in Ireland. During my week and a half in Ireland, U2 was to do a big concert in Cork. I hadn't the money for this, but I could see how proud the Irish people were of the famous rock band.
“The people in Ethiopia need our help! Do you know how many people are starving there every single day? It’s every couple of seconds that someone dies from starvation in Ethiopia!”
Bono starts clapping at a slow cadence. “Each time I clap my hands, someone dies in Ethiopia.”
From the audience: “Well, stop bloody clapping, mate!”
There's been so much good Irish music over the centuries, with it's being the root of American Bluegrass music, the old poetic ballads and all, and later there were Enya, Dolores Mary Eileen O'Riordan - if that ain't Irish? - of The Cranberries, and that woman they called Sinbad O'Conner. However, that stuff wasn't the same for these young people who were going to see THEIR U2. This was rock! This is Red Rocks:
Now, four decades later, Bono’s and U-2’s native land is being overrun with foreigners. The Troubles ended 3 decades ago, but they were nothing at all in comparison to today’s troubles in Ireland, the mass immigration invasion. Peak Stupidity has been pretty excited to see the young, and some old, Irish blokes in the streets** finally having had enough of the new Troubles and rioting against the replacement of the Irish people. Some of has been going on in County Cork, back where that U2 concert was held so long ago.
A mass people's movement against the Population Replacement Programme could use all the inspiration it can get, and we know that good rock music can be pretty inspiring. The sound of U2 is inspiring to me, but to what end?
You spend almost all your adult life with a huge following whom you can influence, urging them to help the Africans and other downtrodden. You write about the Mothers of the Disappeared*** poor Commies in Nicaragua and El Salvador, yet have nothing to say about the thousands of Americans disappeared into African-run dungeons in the Federal Shithole for years? You sing about "The Troubles" between Irishmen and other Irishmen that have been over with for 3 decades, yet have nothing to day about the invasion that is an ongoing existential threat of their being no Irishmen in the future?
Back in his heyday, Bono could see these shitholes around the World and harangue the audience about it but still always come back to his Emerald Irish Isle homeland. Within a few more decades, Ireland may no longer be his homeland the way things are going.
He's not dead yet. Why won’t Bono write a song or two on behalf of the Irish that have been standing up and protesting and rioting against the mass invasion of their and his land? U2 should be doing a bloody Irish Aid concert in support of his own people.
Why won’t Bono make himself useful and become relevant again?
Answer: He’s either really stupid or a coward, and it’s the latter.
PS: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention U2's great bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. These 4 have played together the whole long time, though I myself last kept up through the album Achtung Baby from, OMG, 35 years ago!
* The album title Under a Blood Red Sky comes from a lyric line in Sunday, Bloody Sunday. That song is on the album, recorded live not at Red Rocks, but at the Freilichtbuhne Loreley venue in Sankt Goarshausen, Germany. That would have been in West Germany at the time, still 6 years before the Wall came down. The video above IS from Red Rocks, but it's just not the one included on this live album.
** To give equal time, we've posted videos and discussion of the same happenings in England and in Northern Ireland.
*** That is a slow ballad on the band's excellent album The Joshua Tree from 1987.
Comments:
Moderator
Wednesday - September 16th 2026 2:01PM MST
PS: Do you mean as far as songwriting, Bono is no Lennon or McCartney? That being the case, his voice is great for Rock music, not the old Rock & Roll that Lennon and McCartney started out with but decade later ROCK. It helped, of course, that he was in a great band. The Edge makes a unique sound with his guitar in some of their songs. I'm thinking "Pride in the name of love" for one - lyrics disregarded - don't really matter if you don't make any effort to listen to the words.
I checked out those 2 songs, but you should have probably put in a Yoko Ono trigger warning. (Nah, she's not THAT bad.)
I will bring up Paul McCartney and Wing's song "Mull of Kintyre" one I first heard on the greatest hits album I had, and may still have, on vinyl. I had to go check but that's about a place in Scotland, not Ireland. Great song, though. I'm pretty sure I included it in a post long ago.
I checked out those 2 songs, but you should have probably put in a Yoko Ono trigger warning. (Nah, she's not THAT bad.)
I will bring up Paul McCartney and Wing's song "Mull of Kintyre" one I first heard on the greatest hits album I had, and may still have, on vinyl. I had to go check but that's about a place in Scotland, not Ireland. Great song, though. I'm pretty sure I included it in a post long ago.
Moderator
Wednesday - September 16th 2026 1:54PM MST
PS: Good evening, Alarmist. You seem to run into everyone. You're like a Forest Gump .. only in that sense, of course. I'll have to go check out that video for "One". (Not sure that's a song I've heard, but I'll know when I first hear it.)
The Alarmist
Wednesday - September 16th 2026 8:50AM MST
PS
My IRL encounter with Bobo was in the edit suite where they were doing the music video for “One.” I passed by and heard an Irish accent say, “It’s a fooking buffalo running around in a fooking field.” On my way back, the editor grabbed me and asked what I thought, and so I said with an almost NYC accent, “It’s a fucking buffalo running around a fucking field.” They ended up doing a second version with Bono singing in a bar.
Bono is no Lennon or McCartney
Now, more than ever: Give Ireland Back to the Irish (McCartney)
https://youtu.be/P_O3cCs9qmM
The Luck of the Irish (Lennon)
https://youtu.be/75xeVt8lh7U
🕉
My IRL encounter with Bobo was in the edit suite where they were doing the music video for “One.” I passed by and heard an Irish accent say, “It’s a fooking buffalo running around in a fooking field.” On my way back, the editor grabbed me and asked what I thought, and so I said with an almost NYC accent, “It’s a fucking buffalo running around a fucking field.” They ended up doing a second version with Bono singing in a bar.
Bono is no Lennon or McCartney
Now, more than ever: Give Ireland Back to the Irish (McCartney)
https://youtu.be/P_O3cCs9qmM
The Luck of the Irish (Lennon)
https://youtu.be/75xeVt8lh7U
🕉
Momma says, stupid is as stupid does. My life got incredibly less colorful when I moved to Europe.
Sorry about the “Oh No, Ono!” trigger alert. I downloaded Double Fantasy to my Phone last week to play in the car (getting tired of podcasts), but I forgot to delete the Yoko contributions. The last thing you want to hear is Yoko climaxing on the song “Kiss, Kiss, Kiss,” though some of the other of her tracks were kind of charming 46 years later.
🕉