Towering above the cowering high profile public figures and politicians of the USA stands Bruce Springsteen, who began the opening night of his latest tour last night in Minnesota with these words:
“I want to begin tonight with a prayer for our men & women in service overseas, we pray for their safe return. The mighty E-Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock & roll in dangerous times. We are here in celebration and defense of our American ideals: Democracy, our Constitution, and our sacred American Promise. The America that I love, the America that I have written about for 50 years that has been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world is currently in the hand of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration. Tonight we ask all of you to join with us in choosing Hope over Fear, Democracy over Authoritarianism, the Rule-of-law over Lawlessness, Ethics over unbridled Corruption, Resistance over Complacency, Unity over Division, and Peace over WAR (what is it good for, absolutely nothing)!” You can watch the video here.
The Boss has no need to make these comments. It would be far easier, and probably safer for him, to ignore the fascist takeover of America by the alarmingly unhinged President Trump, but it’s not what he does. When Springsteen says something, he means it. And while the wild-eyed crazies of the MAGA movement will condemn him for having the temerity to challenge the dementia addled malignant narcissist currently destroying America, the truth is that it will resonate with millions of decent Americans who wish only for normality to return to their country.
Trump was rattled last year by what Springsteen said about him. This was his response on the gloriously misnamed Truth Social site:
“I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country. If I wasn’t elected, it would have been GONE by now! Sleepy Joe didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing, but Springsteen is “dumb as a rock,” and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)? This dried out “prune” of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just “standard fare.” Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”
It’s the threat at the end that stands out: “Then we’ll all see how it goes for him.” That, friends, is the voice of a gangster, the leader of the Mob. That is how Trump rules America, leading a bunch of bumbling sycophantic incompetent idiots in the worst government of our lifetimes.
Since Trump’s re-election, the Big Tech Bros have all fallen in line, everyone from Tim Cook at Apple (or Tim Apple, as Trump once called him), Meta supremo Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos among others have been sucking up to Dementia Donny, partly in fear of what a madman might do to their business if they did something this thin-skinned snowflake got upset about. They haven’t just fallen in line: they feed his narcissism with absurd flattery, all of which works against not just their fellow Americans, but everyone on Earth. Springsteen, one of the biggest stars on the planet, leads the way in standing up to the bully. Now it’s time for the rest of America to decide where it stands.
Frank George, a psychologist, neuroscientist, and author of the popular substack Gaslight Report says this about Trump on El Pais:
“He is showing “increasingly worrying symptoms of frontotemporal dementia (FTD).”
“When people hear the word dementia, they usually think of Alzheimer’s, but that’s not what’s happening to him,” he explains. “FTD affects the frontal and temporal lobes. The frontal lobes are where what makes us most human resides; thanks to that part of the brain, we can plan, make rational decisions, and think things through. With this type of dementia, it’s as if the neurological guardrails disappear.”
Among the symptoms of FTD is confabulation, which goes beyond simply making up stories. It’s not lying; it’s believing what one says, however implausible it may seem. Another symptom, George explains, is paraphasia: “making mistakes with words, mispronouncing them, or not knowing how to finish them.” “A third symptom is insistence: how many times has he listed the wars he’s won?” George asks, adding that FTD “makes his narcissism manifest itself more starkly.”
Johns Hopkins University psychologist John Gartner adds his own concerns about Trump: “The only thing more dangerous than an American Hitler is a demented American Hitler”. Anyone seeing Trump speak these days will be concerned about the alarming decline in his mental faculties. It should not just be left to Bruce Springsteen to hold him to account. That’s the responsibility of politicians of all colours and other high-profile people.
“Choose hope, not fear,” said Springsteen. We would do well to do the same over here, where Trump’s Pound Shop impersonator Nigel Farage rides high in the polls.
Trump’s war on Iran is good for nothing. Well done to the rest of the world in general and our government in particular for not falling in behind Trump. And if Springsteen is a “dumb as a rock” as Trump claims, then just how dumb is Trump himself?
