Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Bruce Springsteen and The Death of the Joy
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Bruce Springsteen and The Death of the Joy

The Boss was once an icon for the working class. Now, he's become just another out of touch aristocrat

“I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency. I came for you, for you, I came for you, but your life was one long emergency.” Bruce Springsteen

Me in high school
Back of the photo, written by my friend.

To be on the Left in America is to live in one long emergency. It’s depressing and exhausting, and it’s time to move on. It is the misery of the upper class, of a disrupted utopia, and of people who have too much power and have become too comfortable with it, so much so that they do not want to let it go.

I can’t really blame Barack Obama. What must it be like to feel like a god, to have all of American culture worship you, upend what used to be great movies, great books, great rock and roll, and now, in its place, a reflection of you? That would mess with your head. It would be hard to let go. No wonder he keeps showing up. No wonder he demands that the only people allowed to run for president are lesser, duller versions of himself.

Imagine what it must feel like to be George Clooney, Julia Roberts, or Tom Hanks. Yes, you are among the highest-status Americans inside utopia because you have befriended the man who would be King. But none of them have come from such a high place and fallen so hard as Bruce Springsteen, who abandoned the badlands for the mansion on the hill.

Bruce Springsteen was my idol growing up in the 1980s. I wrapped my legs ‘round his velvet rims and strapped my hands cross his engines. I was just a scared and lonely rider who had to know how it feels, who had to know if love was wild, who had to know if love was real.

Me and Bruce, hiding on the backstreets, going down to the river. I wore out the groove on every single album he ever produced and then could only listen to live bootlegs. Now, I can’t listen at all.

What I know about Bruce is what I know about the modern-day Left. He doesn’t know America anymore. He does not even know the kinds of people who needed his music and who made him rich. He joins the list of once and former icons who helped lift up the lost and forgotten Americans, to make them feel included in something important in our culture.

And now they sneer at those people. Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, JJ Abrams, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce sit on a pile of money given to them by the same Americans they now call Nazis.

That’s why you see idiots like Jack White or the Foo Fighters throwing a hissy fit that Trump might use their precious music at a rally. Yeah, heaven forbid the truck drivers who deliver their food or the nurses who wash off the vomit and urine after a night of partying should be able to hear their music and forget their troubles for a night.

There is nothing more Nazi-like than telling the less powerful group in America they are no longer welcome in their own country, in their restaurants, to watch their movies, or to listen to their music.

No, it isn’t a Jewish star on the windows or coats in Germany, but if you can pull out a Nazi reference to describe Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden? So, can I. That is what the ruling class in America is like now, and they don’t even seem to feel bad about it.

So old Bruce, my buddy, my pal, my singular inspiration, can stand there with his guitar and tell that ridiculous audience that Trump doesn’t know America. Right, Bruce, Trump is the one who doesn’t know America.

And then, the guy who used to rock my world strummed his guitar to play Dancin’ in the Dark one more time, but unfortunately for him, he sounded like a chicken being strangled by a hungry farmer.

Bruce doesn’t know America anymore. He can’t sing for America. The best he could do is entertain White Dudes for Harris in the Hamptons for a Kamala fundraiser. That’s more your crowd now, Bruce.

When I went to a Springsteen concert back in the day, I was one of millions who felt like he was singing only to me. I shouted every word in every song because it went deep inside my soul. I did not know that relationship depended on how my politics would evolve over time. Now, his songs sound so phony, like a rich man in a poor man’s suit, right Bruce?

In 2016, those who used to unite us with all of that great culture I was lucky enough to immerse myself in throughout my life, took a side. They said it’s Trump or us, and they meant it. The other half of America was told, in no uncertain terms, that they were no longer accepted in the land of the rich and famous.

But what did they offer in return? A wrecked, emptied out, dogmatic, unbearably woke culture with unwatchable movies, emasculated rock stars, unfunny comedians, and cult-like devotion to the Democrats.

And you know what? We’re not the better for it. All of America needs culture. We need great movies. We need to feel welcome at all rock concerts, not to be lectured at by an aging Bruce Springsteen who seems to believe like so many Boomers do, that the path to salvation is to get political.

At least we Gen-Xers are around to save future generations from the fate of having to grow up awash in misery and a joyless culture. I knew we were good for something.

Maybe he was kidding. But I doubt it.

As a teenager stuck in a small town in California, I used to lie on my bed and watch the sun sink into the horizon. I had only wide open roads ahead. I remember playing Springsteen’s Something in the Night off Darkness on the Edge of Town over and over. It filled me with longing. It was such a dull ache in my heart that told me something was waiting for me; I just had to reach for it.

Now, the words that come to mind weren’t written by Springsteen, who is no longer someone I look to for insight into the human experience. Instead, I turn to Bob Dylan, who once wrote, “Maybe someday I’ll remember to forget.”

I want my daughter’s generation to grow up in a more free America. All she knows are the things she can’t say, the books she can’t write, the jokes she can’t laugh at, the job she can’t want. They pretend on the Left that they are the ones who want more freedom, but they don’t. They want you to think only one way. Their way.

What bothers me most about today’s left is that it is, ironically, the closest thing to fascism this country has ever seen. Only one side demands conformity, attempts to jail their political enemies, and seeks to censor speech. Only one side has co-opted all of the institutions of culture, politics, and commerce. And only one side wields their singular power against the individual.

Hungry Heart

In the summer of 2020, I sat in my lonely room once again and tried to find something resembling signs of life. It came like distant music, the sound of laughter and cheers. What was that golden light off in the distance, drawing me out of darkness and misery?

There they were, happy people, dancing. Why were they dancing? Didn’t they know the world was about to be destroyed by climate change? Didn’t they know Hitler was running for president? Didn’t they care about catching COVID? Everything had been taken from them. They were treated like second-class citizens, called “racists,” “white supremacists,” and “Nazis.” And yet, they were happy.

What did they have to be happy about?

Dr. Seuss knew. He knew that the Grinch could take everything from the Whos of Whoville, but it could never change who they were inside and what they believed in. He could not take the love in their hearts, their joy, or their faith. So when he hears the Whos celebrating Christmas anyway, what else can the Grinch do but melt?

I was drawn to MAGA rallies because they were the only place in America where people feel close to normal again. At least the Harris campaign is finally running on the only thing they have to sell: fear.

But the MAGA rallies are not about fear. They’re about joy. Because they are free. The more people gravitate to that golden light in the wasteland our culture has become, the more they will taste that freedom.

Imagine a world where you aren’t judged by every word that comes out of your mouth, you can still laugh at jokes, and you aren’t confined to be defined by your skin color or gender ideology. That is what freedom tastes like.

Like the Democrats, Bruce Springsteen doesn’t represent freedom anymore. Or joy. But it is his song The Land of Hope and Dreams that reminds me of MAGA and how Trump has built a lasting movement that gives us hope for a brighter future.

This train
Carries saints and sinners
This train
Carries losers and winners
This Train
Carries whores and gamblers
This Train
Carries lost souls
This Train
Dreams will not be thwarted
This Train
Faith will be rewarded
This Train
Hear the steel wheels singin'
This Train
Bells of freedom ringin'

I can’t listen to any modern version of this song because it rings hollow. Bruce isn’t part of those of us who long to be free. But I can listen to it from 2001 before everything changed. It reflected the best in all of us then. We were still part of the same country before heroes like Bruce Springsteen took a side.

Madison Square Garden is a venue The Boss has played many times. His shows there were legendary. But now, it’s Trump’s rally that will do for the forgotten Americans of this country what Springsteen’s concerts used to. They can call it a Nazi rally if they want, but they’re just blinded by the light. If there’s one thing Trump knows that Bruce once did, it’s hard to be a saint in the city.

//end

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Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Essays on politics and culture from Sasha Stone's Substack. A former Democrat and Leftist who escaped the bubble to get to know the other side of the country and to take a more critical look at the left. Sashastone.substack.com