....(which he is, on his new album) doesn't that mean that the situation is worse than it ever has been? I mean, the guy is like 80, and has been writing songs about love and raindrops for his whole life. He's lived through all the wars and all the administrations of the past century, but Only Now feels so compelled by the dire state of the country that he would, in his own words, write a song about it.
Where have all the protest songs gone anyway? I mean the ones that we all know, not just scattered fan bases.
The corollary thought is, there is an Old Wisdom that assures us, "Sure, things seem bad right now, but it has always been thus, and you are only now of the age to acknowledge it." Or, put another way, "In MY day, we had to walk to school, through the snow, six miles, uphill, both ways..." etc. It's this cozening thought which urges us to put things in perspective, and not act like such a victim of society.
It occurs to me that this Old Wisdom might, too, be a part of the vast right-wing corporate conspiracy. Because perhaps things have been bad before, but they were never so bad that Burt Bacharach felt he had to take a break from writing love songs and comment on it. It's to the bad guys' advantage when people say, "they're bad, true, but they're no worse than the past bad administrations, and certainly no worse than (...blank...)"
It's something else when qualitative information suggests that "Actually, even in comparison to other regimes, THESE Current Bastards ARE the most evil conniving vicious bunch of Bastards to EVER HOLD POWER."
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