In keeping with my lapsed literary training, I wasn't considering WG at all, but only the text. What the text might mean, irrespective of whatever WG meant. So WG is not in it.
> . . .
> in the courtroom, as victims. It is "We the People:" against whom the
crime was committed, not some alleged individual victim, and if the court
acts otherwise, then we have repudiated the rule of law.>
Legitimate, but not relevant as far as I can see. We the people can decide to hang somebody. In consideration of any such hanging, my only hope is that they consider the harm to the victims, both as individuals and as part of society (sort of dialectical), unlike the song quoted.
> And of course that is what Guthrie's last two stanzas are focused
> on:
>
> Tell me who makes the laws for that hang knot...
> I don't know who makes the laws for that hang knot...
> Just because they tied their laws with a hang knot...
>
> Any one who reads or listens to Guthrie without assuming the same subtlety
which one would find in Joyce or Stevens or James isn't listening.>
A good song or verse -- subtle and all that -- can have profoundly anti-social implications. Like that Pound guy.
mbs