I tried to figure out the right Memorial Day mix of pop culture and politics to opinionate on this weekend.  But try as I might nothing was working.

Until Bruce Springsteen did the job for me.

Singer-songwriters can do that.  But when they’re also the superstar frontman for their own superstar band, and have just begun an international tour, well, that’s even better.

Meaning not only can they get a message out with talent and charisma but they have a humongous platform from which to do it from.

It’s difficult to live your entire life in a country that has always aspired to liberty and justice for ALL – even in decades where it has fallen far short of them – and watch it being slowly dismantled, one principle at a time, by a man who seems to operate primarily on vengeance, rage, pathological self-glorification and bottom line personal grift numbering in the many millions, and now billions, and counting.

But here we are.

One could ask the question, how much money do you need once you reach a billion plus, but let’s not.  Because we all know that by the time you surpass a billion it’s not about the planes, cars, yachts, houses and hookers – it’s about the power.

As Mel Brooks once famously joked in his 1981 film, The History of the World, Part I: It’s good to be the King!

Though history and literature show us that while it might be for, well, a time, for most Kings it’s a very mixed bag.  And for many it doesn’t end well.  At all.

What’s that old expression?  Oh, right –

Power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I generally don’t like old expressions but in this case and in this country it feels apt. 

Or as I said not so famously to my husband this week, I feel like we’re in the beginning of the fourth act of a five-act Shakespearean-like tragedy where the King will be doomed after destroying parts of his country but, like all great plays, we’re not yet sure what His doom will look like or exactly how it will play out.

I know that might sound like nasty, wishful thinking but I am absolutely sure of one fact:  After a lifetime of movies, books and miniseries, I can recognize a doomed, over-the-top main character in a larger-than-life modern-day tragedy a million miles away. And so could any of you with a brain.

But what most of us are unable to do is to sing and communicate it as well as Bruce “The Boss”  Springsteen.

Memorial Day is a time to honor those who died while serving in the United States military for sacrifices made in defending the freedoms our country has tried to always stand for.  So I can’t think of anything more patriotic in May/June 2025 than to post two clips of The Boss at a recent concert in Manchester, England.  He encapsulates what it means be a real patriot by putting himself front and center on the firing line of dissent in order to push back against what seems to so many of us to be our first aspiring Oval Office dictator.

Here are the opening five minutes of his remarks from the stage:

And here are some highlights of him and the quintessentially American rock ‘n roll E Street Band.

Let freedom ring, indeed.