TIPPY TOP – The New Arms Race of 2018

Here’s is a parody on the old folk tune Yankee Doodle Dandy. This one deals with the Nuclear Posture Review of 2018, a document from the White House which explains the nuclear posture of the current administration. It involves production of more nuclear weapons and allows the president to use them in non-nuclear confrontations from a perspective they describe as “credible deterrence against regional aggression.” It’s all explained here.

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THE ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL
YANKEE DOODLE

The tune of Yankee Doodle is thought to be much older than the lyrics, being well known across western Europe, including England, France, Holland, Hungary, and Spain. The earliest words of “Yankee Doodle” came from a Middle Dutch harvest song which is thought to have followed the same tune, possibly dating back as far as 15th-century Holland. It contained mostly nonsensical words in English and Dutch: “Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther, Yanke viver, voover vown, Botermilk und tanther.” Farm laborers in Holland were paid “as much buttermilk (Botermilk) as they could drink, and a tenth (tanther) of the grain”.

The term Doodle first appeared in English in the early seventeenth century and is thought to be derived from the Low German dudel, meaning “playing music badly”, or Dödel, meaning “fool” or “simpleton”. The Macaroni wig was an extreme fashion in the 1770s and became slang for being a fop. Dandies were men who placed particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisure hobbies. A self-made dandy was a British middle-class man who impersonated an aristocratic lifestyle. They notably wore silk strip cloth, stuck feathers in their hats, and carried two pocket watches with chains—”one to tell what time it was and the other to tell what time it was not”.

The macaroni wig was an example of Rococo dandy fashion, popular in elite circles in Western Europe and much mocked in the London press. The term macaroni was used to describe a fashionable man who dressed and spoke in an outlandishly affected and effeminate manner. The term pejoratively referred to a man who “exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion” in terms of clothes, fastidious eating, and gambling.

In British conversation, the term “Yankee doodle dandy” implied unsophisticated misappropriation of high-class fashion, as though simply sticking a feather in one’s cap would make one to be noble. Peter McNeil, professor of fashion studies, claims that the British were insinuating that the colonists were low-class men lacking masculinity, emphasizing that the American men were womanly.

LYRICS to TIPPY TOP
Lyrics by Don Caron
Music and Orchestration by Andrew Wrangell (https://sellfy.com/p/AvJn/)

LYRICS to TIPPY TOP

Imagine a job interview
to pick the button-steward,
the button that would blow us up
and make the world a sewer

Here’s the guy who got the job
and what has he to say
about the nuclear weapons stock
with which he wants to play?

TRUMP:
Putin has built up their military
again and again and again.
Their military’s much stronger.
Our nuclear is old and tired
and his nuclear is tippy top
from what I hear.

PARODY PROJECT:
What did he just say?

TRUMP:
Tippy top from what I hear.

TRUMP:
I like tippy tops,
I like tippy tops
Tippy top, tippy top, tippy top.

I like tippy tops,
I like tippy tops
Tippy top, tippy top, tippy top.

PARODY PROJECT:
There’s a fool in the house
with the girls he’s handy
but with the nation one must doubt
his modus operandi.

This song won’t make sense ’til you know
about the NPR:
The Nuclear Posture Review
and it’s beyond bizarre.

According to this new review
our Nukes are just not credible.
It’s hard to fit this in a rhyme
so I’m just going to explain it.

So right out of the Trump Defense Department we have
the Nuclear Posture Review of 2018,
which says in a nutshell that
our nuclear weapons are too big and too deadly
to EVER USE and the whole world knows
that we would NEVER USE them
so we’ve lost our “nuclear credibility.”

To regain our nuclear credibility they propose that we manufacture
a shit-pile, sorry, stockpile of “low-yield” nuclear weapons
which they say we will never need to USE
because our adversaries will THINK we WILL USE them
which means we won’t NEED TO USE them,
since it’s only when they think we WOULDN’T USE them
that we would end up HAVING TO USE them
but in order for us to make them think we WOULD USE them
we have to THREATEN TO USE them
so we say that we WOULD USE them
and maybe we even USE THEM here and there
because after all, they are only “low-yield” nuclear weapons
so everyone will be afraid that we’ll USE THEM even more
and then we can finally feel safe and secure.

And that’s the gist of the Nuclear Posture Review of 2018
from the Trump Whitehouse
“Low yield” suggests a a kinder, gentler sort of nuke, until you realize that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
were technically “low-yield” weapons.
We already have around a thousand of those in our stockpile.

TRUMP:
I like tippy tops,
I like tippy tops
Tippy top, tippy top …

PARODY PROJECT:
Shutup!

They did this to us once before
We had to duck and cover.
If we fall for it once again
We probably won’t recover.

Let your congress person know
a vote to fund this arms race
will get them voted out of office
gone without a trace.

Let your congress person know
a vote to fund this arms race
will get them voted out of office
gone without a trace,
gone without a trace.

You may also be interested in our “Hallelujah Parody,” as well as a non-parody commemorative for the children who died at Parkland titled “In Memoria.”