Springsteen Cosplays Oppression

A Short Take

It took me a while to become so disgusted with Springsteen that I couldn’t listen to his music anymore. I had to become disillusioned with the dream of the Left, which I did. I had to realize that hatred of Trump, screeching endlessly in public, was spitting in the face of those who voted for him, many of them, who made Springsteen rich, and I did.

Finally, I had to accept that the guy singing those songs about going down to the river or driving muscle cars didn’t exist. It was a character Springsteen made up to become the famous rock star he wanted to be.

Bruce Springsteen sits on a pile of money because he pretended to speak to and for the working class. He lied about who he was and made great music in the meantime.

I was such a fan. I knew every word to every song, so much that I couldn’t listen to the studio recordings. I could only listen to bootlegs.

That wasn’t unusual. Bob Dylan played around with various identities to become somebody, from the Woody Guthrie folk singer to a cool, detached rock star. But Bob Dylan was a genius. Bruce Springsteen is not. That’s why he had to sell himself as an average Joe hidin’ on the backstreets.

Now, when I listen to those songs, I hear a phony. He was a great performer until he began to think too highly of himself as someone “important.” That happens to the best of them. Once your basic needs are met and you have everything you could have ever wanted, your problems become existential.

Springsteen can no longer speak to or for the working class. His songs ring hollow because he has shown who he really is: the guy in the mansion on the hill, on the yacht with the Obamas.

A Springsteen biopic called Deliver Me From Nowhere is coming out this year. That explains why he’s causing such a stir now. He knows how to give the sycophantic press exactly what they want to turn him into a hero, just as his movie is coming out.

Springsteen was on the set of that movie every single day, watching everything. His fingerprints will be all over it. Whenever a subject is that close to the project, it spells doom. Not that the elite side of this country won’t slobber all over it. They will. There will be awards and tributes.

I was looking forward to Deliver Me From Nowhere, or at least trying to make myself want to watch it, but now, as Springsteen does what everyone on the Left has done for the past ten years—tell half the country they aren’t welcome at his shows or to listen to his music—I have lost any interest in even watching it.

But that’s as good a reason as any as to why suddenly brave oppressed warrior Bruce is coming out from the shadows to SPEAK OUT!

From a USA Today article:

“Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American spirit to rise with us, raise your voices and stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring,” said Springsteen, according to a livestream of the show.

“There's some very weird, strange, and dangerous (expletive) going on out there right now,” said Springsteen during both shows. “In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.”

Springsteen doesn’t even know what democracy means. It’s a big word he throws around that he does not understand, like “authoritarianism.” Needless to say, Trump won because more people voted for him, which is the very definition of democracy.

Bruce is obviously watching too much MSNBC and isn’t the first mind to be ruined by Rachel Maddow’s well-played sincerity.

When you hear Springsteen cosplay oppression, you do understand why Trump won. He is the only person from wealth and privilege who dares to attack them.

And then, he gives Springsteen and all of the richest and most powerful people in the world, more fuel for their oppression cosplay - why, Trump, why? Now we have to watch the media turn Bruce Springsteen’s fake oppression into a story. We have to watch the press turn him into a hero just so his dumb movie can do well at the Oscars — see, we’re important!

The movie, however, will be about a guy who was more of a snake-oil salesman, good at writing songs and performing them. I fell for it. I believed in him. It resonated deeply with so many of us who had a notion, a notion deep inside that it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.

I wonder if he’ll come clean in this movie and paint himself as the lying hypocrite he really is. I doubt it; unlike Bob Dylan, he cannot examine himself critically. He has no gift of satire. He has no shame.

He is among those who aligned with Obama and began to see themselves as gods - that kind of power must be intoxicating. But the twilight of his career sounds like a crybaby temper tantrum because things didn’t go his way.

Now he’s gone and ruined one of his all-time greatest songs, The Land of Hope and Dreams.

It says:

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'
This Train
Carries broken-hearted
This Train
Thieves and sweet souls departed
This Train
Carries fools and kings
This Train
All aboard

He’s using it as his screaming anthem against Trump without realizing that is not the song’s message. For many in this country, Trump led them to their land of hope and dreams. If Springsteen had even an ounce of humility and gratitude for those who brung him, he’d welcome them back to his shows.

Instead, he’s walled himself off from his fans, joined the rest of the special people in their castle in the sky, and told all those who aren’t board with the status quo that they aren’t welcome.

Watching the fall of an empire is hard. Springsteen can’t speak to any of us now. He can only speak to our memories of him, which are fading fast.

I’ll still occasionally listen to his music, but it will never do to me what it used to. I know too much now. How the mighty have fallen.

On the road,

Barstow, CA