When he announced he was going to tour again, I knew I’d be there, probably somewhere in the nosebleed section. As it turns out, our seats were great for the first night of his American tour in Phoenix. “Do you feel the spirit?” a happy and healthy looking 74 year old Springsteen asked when he took the stage right on time, and about 20,000 of us roared back that yes, yes we did. We felt it for the next few hours and you could see it on our faces when we emptied out onto Jefferson Street, “I’ll See you in My Dreams” ringing in our ears.

Since 1984, I have seen Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band a dozen times, and there isn’t a 4th of July – or a Presidential race – when I don’t think of him. When I’m asked why I came to America, I know they know from something in my response that Bruce Springsteen is a part of it. And, every Fourth of July in Phoenix,  when fireworks flash and fly across the desert sky, I found myself transported back to a twilight over Slane Castle, lit up with music and the notion of America.

I am young, and had I not been awake, I would have missed it

. . . the whole of me a-patter,
Alive and ticking like an electric fence:
Had I not been awake I would have missed it

~ Seamus Heaney

My first rock ‘n’ roll concert at Slane Castle was in 1982 for The Rolling Stones “farewell tour.”  The Stones were saying goodbye. Goodbye. Warming up for them were the J. Geils Band, The Chieftains, and George Thorogood and the Destroyers. As you all know, The Stones continued to say goodbye as recently as this year …

In 1984,  I found myself back at Slane to see UB40, Santana, and Bob Dylan. Too, there was the sweet surprise of Van Morrison  joining Dylan on stage to sing “Tupelo Honey.” As I recall, Bono showed up as well and in front of all of us – and Bob Dylan – he improvised, making up his own lyrics to “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Who does that?

And on June 1, 1985 – where my mind is this morning – America came to Ireland when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band made their Irish debut.

The previous summer, I had been in the United States, the Born in the USA tour in full swing and was lucky to have been upstate New York at the same time as Springsteen. I saw him perform at Saratoga Springs and again in September, when a trip to Niagara Falls with an American cousin included a Springsteen show in Buffalo.

I knew Ireland was in for a treat, and when tickets went on sale, I also bought one for my little brother. It would be his first concert – a seminal moment in his musical education.  Imagine it. Close to 100,000 of us making a pilgrimage through the sleepy – and disapproving – village of Slane to see The Boss. Between assurances of increased security and a promise – as yet unfulfilled – that this would be the last rock concert to disturb them, the residents had been placated. Even the weather cooperated with the kind of sun-drenched day we Irish pray for. Some said it was the hottest day on record in Ireland.

Everybody was young, even the weather-beaten old farmers who let us use their fields as parking lots, and when the band burst on stage with a thunderous “Born in the USA,” everybody was Irish, even Bruce. When he turned his baseball cap backwards and bragged, “I had a grandmother from here,” the crowd erupted.

Although we all basked in his pride that day, the reality was that our weather was rarely that sunny, and thousands of us would soon be forced out of Ireland as economic immigrants, collectively the “brain drain” of the 1980s.

Across the water, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister; farther afield, the Berlin wall was still standing; and, in Ireland, divorce was still illegal and condoms had barely become available without a prescription. But on that glorious day, in spite of the economic and political truths of Ireland, and the ever-diminishing possibilities before us, a defiant Springsteen held us aloft, and we believed in America.

I have always counted on Springsteen to stand up and say it loud for people like me, for immigrants seeking America. I have always known I could count on Bruce more than presidential contenders hell-bent on convincing me  that the idea of America is unraveling.

After the events of this week, I began to wonder. Is America over? It’s very foundation has certainly been challenged in lasting and troubling ways.  What do I know? I am not a politician or a rockstar. I’m just a girl with bad hair and a fearless heart and – after three decades working in public education and paying attention to politics –  a conviction that we have lost our way.

Springsteen once told a reporter that he wasn’t cut out for the traditional school system:

I wasn’t quite suited for the educational system. One problem with the way the educational system is set up is that it only recognizes a certain type of intelligence, and it’s incredibly restrictive — very, very restrictive. There’s so many types of intelligence, and people who would be at their best outside of that structure get lost.

Agreed. The Boss was probably on to something, but we know that Bruce Springsteen will never be an elected official. We also know he will never be a politician who would vilify immigrants or the working poor like the kind of politician who fancies himself American’s next King.

In A Nation of Immigrants, John F. Kennedy wrote that

 Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy we can turn to the world, and to our own past, with clean hands and a clear conscience.

Over half a century later, such a policy remains elusive. Why is that? Why? We’re learning why.

In the past few weeks, while Bruce Springsteen has been touring the world in places some Americans are considering as escape destinations, education and immigration among other critical issues for the democracy are under scrutiny.

America is in new trouble, the most recent debacle occurring just days ago when the highest court in the land elevated American Presidents to monarch status. Surely the Justices see the irony in that?

Now, I haven’t read all 900 pages of Project 2025,  funded to the tune of $22M byThe Heritage Foundation think tank which has been producing similar policy documents as part of its Mandate for Leaderships series since the 1980s. With input from more than 100 conservative organizations, Project 2025’s language is showing up in Trump speeches, reflecting the following broad goals:

• restore the family as the centerpiece of American life
• dismantle the administrative state
• defend the nation’s sovereignty and borders
• secure God-given individual rights to live freely.

A closer look at the practical implementation of these ideas is more troubling:

• Government: Project 2025 proposes that the entire federal bureaucracy be paced under direct presidential control (including agencies like the Department of Justice) and also calls for elimination of the Department of Education as well as the FBI which the writers cast as a “bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization” and calls for drastic overhauls of this and other federal agencies, including elimination of the Department of Education.Immigration
• Immigration: more funding for the wall on Trump’s US-Mexico border and more increases on fees for immigrant applications
• The Climate: cutting federal funding for research and investment in renewable energy; calls for America’s next president to “stop the war on oil and natural gas”.
• Education:  Project 2025 calls for school choice and parental control over schools, and targets “woke propaganda”. Also proposes eradicating a long list of terms from ALL laws and regulations that include “sexual orientation”, “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, “gender equality”, “abortion” and “reproductive rights”

Add to this, Heritage president’s Kevin Roberts statement during a podcast this week, during which he raised the prospect of political violence:

We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,”

On this day, when we mark the birth of America and the foundations of its Constitution and celebrate life, liberty, and happiness, I find myself wondering – for just a minute – if those things are intended only for the whitest and wealthiest among us. And then I pull myself together. America belongs to you and me. Remember that.

Today, my best wishes for the 4th of July are with the truth-tellers, especially those in the media who will continue to tell us what we need to know – about Project 2024, about the unbecoming behavior of Justice Alito and his wife, Justice  Clarence Thomas and his wife, about why we should question why Biden’s advanced age matters but Trump’s crimes don’t … and on and on.

The more we know, the better we’ll do. America isn’t over.

Comments

comments