unless of course they're crazy, violent, racist, anti-semitic christofascists...or some other violent sect.

And aren't the Sufis peaceful mistics who study and contemplate how to get closer to Allah? They don't eff with anyone.

I visited Senegal back in the late '80s. I can't play it but here's a photo. It's 25" long from the top of the neck to the short legs under the bowl. I did a quick photoshop job to combine the image of the whole instrument and a close up of the bowl to show the cowry shell ornamentation, the handles and the strings are visible. It also has a couple of horn ornamentations on the back of the bowl. One is visible protruding from the back.

just Czar/landlord/serfs for centuries, and then dictator/apparatchik/peasant in the Soviet Union...too bad. They just don't get the concept of people voting in their leaders, and voting them out if they do a piss poor job.

They just want to be dominated by a strongman daddy figure either in royal robes or Stalinist military garb or poorly tailored Soviet-era suits. Which is why they couldn't adjust to Gorbechev in his stylish Euro cut suits and his modern, reformist ideas. He definitely had to go.

No wonder they feel empty now...and Ukraine was just sitting there...all bread-baskety with food worth billions and plumb for the taking.

and work and vote for candidates as far as possible who lean that way. Progressive pragmatism does creep in as we need to win elections to implement policies, and not be so inflexibly idealistic that we never get anything done (see the accomplishments of the Biden Admin in just two years).

Things have to get done for the general welfare of the people.

That last sentence sounds somewhat socialistic, right, and I'm sure you agree with it. We lean left but understand the nation doesn't lean as far left as we do and that the word "socialism" is toxic to many (many boomer and GenXer voters, not all by any means, who were school as kids about Khrushchev, Brezhnev, fallout shelters, the Cuban missile crisis, the iron curtain, Red China, failed communist collectives, Stalininst purges and on and on. Many of those voters never lost the fear of socialism/communism and vote that way. Florida's Cuban and Venezuelan voters for instance, and of course republicans.

What say you? And really I myself voted for Gus Hall and Angela Davis in my first presidential vote, lived in Berkeley across the street from a hippie commune...the whole works.

So I get where you're coming from but understand pragmatism is often necessary. BTW, IIRC the world is still waiting for a sustained society/nation that has a socialistic economy.