Thursday, 15 May 2025

Pick a side

We pause the Mid-Atlantic for a few words from one of its greatest sons. Bruce Springsteen. This is what he had to say in Manchester last night. How I wish I had been there. I've said a few words here from time to time, but Springsteen nails it. He tells it like he is. I could not be more proud of a true American. Pick a side. Bruce has.


In my home, the America I love, the America I've written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.

[...]

Now, there's some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now.

In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.

In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.

In my country, they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers, they're rolling back historic Civil Rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society, they're abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.

They're defunding American universities that won't bow down to their ideological demands. They're removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.

A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.

They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American. The America that I've sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people.

So we'll survive this moment.

Now, I have hope because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, in this world, there isn't as much humanity as one would like. But there's enough.

Let's pray.

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