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Title: "How Bruce Springsteen Fooled America"
Source:
American Spectator
URL Source: https://spectator.org/how-bruce-springsteen-fooled-america/
Published: Sep 2, 2025
Author: John Mac Ghlionn
Post Date: 2025-09-02 14:42:56 by Mudboy Slim
Keywords: None
Views: 4343
Comments: 9
Springsteen is not a patriot. He isn’t the voice of American pride. He’s a salesman, and a disingenuous one at that. Bruce Springsteen is considered by many to be the voice of America. A patriot. A hero. The blue-collar troubadour who stood shoulder to shoulder with working men and sang their stories back to them. But according to Aaron Lewis, that image is a fraud. He’s right. The evidence is impossible to ignore. For too long, American art has been infected with the habit of self- loathing. Lewis rose in the late 1990s as frontman of Staind, one of the era’s biggest rock bands, selling millions and filling arenas. In recent years, he has reinvented himself as a solo country artist. Unlike most musicians parroting Hollywood politics, he wears his patriotism openly. His songs are bluntly pro-American, his shows draped in the Stars and Stripes. Mocked and scorned, he hasn’t backed down. That’s why his criticism of Springsteen carries weight. During a recent discussion with Tucker Carlson, Lewis called Born in the U.S.A. “one of the most anti-American songs ever written.” To a casual listener, that might sound absurd. After all, the title itself sounds like a celebration. The chorus is shouted like a stadium anthem. Politicians from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton have used it as campaign music. For decades, it has been played at parades and fireworks displays as if it were no different from “God Bless America.” But the verses of Born in the U.S.A. don’t honor America. They attack it. The song tells the story of a Vietnam veteran who comes home to find only unemployment and rejection. It describes the United States not as a land of opportunity, but as a cold and ungrateful country that discards its own citizens. It’s a protest song wrapped in a patriotic-sounding package. And millions of Americans, too distracted by the chorus, never realized they were singing along to an indictment of their own nation. The truth is that anti-American sentiment runs through much of Springsteen’s catalogue. He built his image on denim, guitars, and the language of hard work. But again and again, his lyrics frame the country not as a place of promise but as a failed experiment. The River doesn’t just mourn economic despair; it tells the story of young love crushed under the weight of lost jobs and broken promises, a couple forced into early marriage and left with nothing but regret. It paints the American dream as a cruel bait-and-switch, where factory closings and hard times overshadow any sense of hope. Youngstown goes even further, naming the steel mills, tracing the legacy of American industry, and then turning on the very country that built them. “Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do,” Springsteen sings, blaming America itself for gutting its own workers. The song doesn’t search for renewal; it wallows in anger, portraying the nation as a betrayer rather than a builder. Born to Run, hailed by critics as a youthful anthem, is in fact about flight. The characters don’t dream of building a life within America’s promise; they dream of escaping its suffocation. “We gotta get out while we’re young,” Springsteen declares, because to stay is to decay. It’s not a love song to the country; it’s an indictment of it. Even The Rising, written in response to the deadliest attack on American soil, avoids the language of courage or national unity. Instead, it dwells almost entirely on grief and futility, framing America’s great tragedy as proof of fragility rather than proof of strength. Where other artists in that moment turned to patriotism and resilience, Springsteen doubled down on lament, offering elegy instead of resolve. Of course, an artist has the right to critique his nation. But Springsteen didn’t just critique. He built his entire persona on the appearance of patriotism, all while smuggling in cynicism and resentment. He let generations of fans believe he was celebrating America, when in reality, he was often condemning it. That’s what Lewis exposed: the gap between the myth of “the Boss” and the message in his music. And the message matters. Because culture shapes identity. Songs that become anthems don’t just fill the radio; they shape how people see their own country. When millions of Americans embraced Born in the U.S.A. as a patriotic rallying cry, they were unknowingly cheering a song that depicted their homeland as a machine of betrayal. And abroad, Springsteen became the “authentic” American voice exported worldwide. In Ireland, my country of birth, he was elevated almost to sainthood, seen as the songsman of the American dream itself. In calling out Springsteen, Lewis is diagnosing a cultural sickness. For too long, American art has been infected with the habit of self- loathing. In classrooms, authors like Howard Zinn rewrote the nation’s story as one long chain of sins, teaching students to dwell on its failures rather than its triumphs. In publishing, Ta-Nehisi Coates turned grievance into gospel, insisting America is defined not by opportunity but by oppression. Hollywood has followed the same path. Films like Get Out paint the suburbs as sinister, a stage where America’s smiles mask malice. Even superhero franchises, our modern myths, are bent toward cynicism, trading courage for constant criticism. Superman, once a symbol of hope, is now reimagined as conflicted and brooding. Batman films linger on moral ambiguity rather than justice. Meanwhile, Marvel sidelines its heroes’ strengths to score cultural points. Music has marched in lockstep. Rage Against the Machine turned rebellion into a business model, raging against America while selling out arenas. Green Day’s American Idiot dripped with disdain, mocking patriotism in the very years when many Americans clung to it most. Punk, pop, and hip-hop alike have often reduced the country to a caricature of greed, grinding the flag into little more than a prop for protest. Springsteen is simply the most successful example. He clad anti-Americanism in denim and delivered it with choruses large enough to rattle arenas. It’s time we notice. It’s time we admit that Lewis is right: Born in the U.S.A. isn’t patriotic. It isn’t celebratory. It’s condescension, a five-minute complaint, set to music that deliberately misleads. And in a culture where music becomes memory, where songs become symbols, that deception has consequences. Springsteen will always have defenders who insist his criticisms are rooted in love. But love doesn’t look like constant contempt. Love doesn’t sound like sneering at the very country that gave you unimaginable success. Springsteen is not a patriot. He isn’t the voice of American pride. He’s a salesman, a disingenuous one at that. He fooled a nation into cheering its own condemnation. And Aaron Lewis is right to call him out.
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#1. To: Mudboy Slim (#0)
Gotta love The Noooge...MUD
True Wisdom...MUD
And that "brand" ain't coming off in OUR lifetimes...MUD
#6. To: All (#5)
Kimmel's contract expires in January of 2026...he's a goner...MUD
Regards...MUD
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#3. To: A K A Stone (#1)
#4. To: All (#3)
#5. To: All (#4)
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