What's Really Happening?

[setsuled]

Watch on YouTube

This new Bruce Springsteen song has nearly four million views as I write this. For the first audio only upload, there are over 5 million views. These videos were released two days ago. It's the first new release from Springstreen to exceed a million views since 2023. Fascinatingly, most of the comments I see on the "Streets of Minneapolis" videos seem to be from Germany, Portugal, Poland, and even South Korea, alongside some statements from Minnesotans expressing gratitude for Springsteen's eloquent expression of solidarity. I think this song will be remembered long after 2026.

In a crisis situation, people often talk about how things seem unreal, even people who are direct witnesses. Some comments I've seen since the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have wondered why there hasn't been a more profound reaction to this violation of law, community, and social order in the United States. This song is an example of one way art functions. To say art is a mirror often makes it seem like art is insubstantial or meaningless but without a mirror you can't see yourself. Art is the mirror. Undeniably real things sometimes don't seem to take form until the human race finds some way to process it, to find and communicate the meaning to itself.

I see a lot of people reposting the line from George Orwell's 1984, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” It's an apt quote for how blatantly Trump, Noem, and their cohorts have lied. Unfortunately, it's too often also applicable to leftwing media. The two sides of the political spectrum in America have seldom been more at odds and yet, if you take a view from outside the bubble, they've also seldom been more alike. If you think back to the bizarre excuses and gratuitous exultation in the wake of Charlie Kirk's shooting, it's easy to see the left is just as capable of reckless rancor. Overall, it's clear a new kind of rhetorical methodology has come to dominate the landscape. It's brought us to this point where laws are increasingly unable to serve their function as abstract processes, a civilised substitute for the physical violence of war. There's too much bad faith. Springsteen's known for being something of a partisan but he's a genuine artist and his song can't help but evoke the plain reality.

Two innocent people were murdered by people endowed with authority.

It's not just murder, it's a crack in the social order. There are only two possible outcomes now; civil war, or the mechanisms of American justice rally to hold the guilty accountable. The latter seems almost impossible at this point.

I was a little hesitant about Alex Pretti at first because I didn't see any of the video of his murder for a few days. I saw he was a guy in military colours with a black cap low over his face and I heard he was carrying a gun. I'm not disputing his right to carry a gun but he certainly seemed like a guy who was there to start shit while there was nothing ambiguous about Renee Good's murder. But then I saw one of the many videos of Pretti being shoved to the ground, being disarmed, and then just being executed. As I saw Sam Harris say in a video, it doesn't matter if Alex Pretti were the worst person in the world. He was restrained and there was no reason for ICE to use deadly force. Even Anakin Skywalker had a better excuse for executing Count Dooku.

Yeah, I'll use a Star Wars reference. Again, art is what helps us see reality. That's one way we can tell good art from bad art.

I guess that partly explains why one man dressed as Batman to protest ICE. I guess we've reached a turning point when political speakers are more likely to dress as Batman than as the Joker.

X Sonnet 1979

Where shuffling feet attract their ragged shoes
The walkers want a rubber stop to clear
The fragile floor, inviting scratching clues
To win a prize beside the puzzled bear
Who turned his head in time for pastry shows
Designed to teach a penguin how to talk
Discerning birds who wear tuxedo bows
And stamp the brutal ice to hotly walk
Away from cold, ahead to ifrit town
Partaking of the fire beer and gin
Which renders peace beneath pierrot's crown
Of lollipops and someone's stupid grin.
We play it all beneath the common house
And petty brains prostrate before the mouse.