Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Bruce Springsteen and What Protest Songs Sound Like to Soldiers (Ret. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling)
Very moving column from Mark Hertling - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hertling .
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/bruce-springsteen-and-what-protest-songs-sound-like-to-soldiers-streets-of-minneapolis
Bruce Springsteen and What Protest Songs Sound Like to Soldiers
What the rock icon’s new song about Minneapolis asks of us.
Mark Hertling
Jan 29, 2026
-snipping to get to what he writes specifically about Springsteen's new song-
It isn’t about soldiers going overseas, or even about war in the abstract. It is about Americans confronting Americans. It is about power exercised at home, lives lost on our own streets, and the strain placed on who we say we are—and who we aspire to be.
Springsteen has always written about place, dignity, and struggle, giving a rock inflection to the kinds of concerns that older generations had taken up in folk music (and sometimes blues, bluegrass, and country). But this song feels more inward-facing than much of Springsteen’s earlier work. It is mournful rather than strident. It doesn’t ask whether a war is just; it asks whether we are. When he sings of “snow-filled streets” and names the dead, he anchors the song in lived loss, not ideology. And when he describes authority moving through a city with weapons visible and fear close at hand, he isn’t protesting a policy so much as questioning a condition.
This represents a profound shift in protest music—and arguably in the nation itself. This isn’t a song about a war we are fighting, or about economic or racial inequality. This is a song about the values we are testing. It asks what we are willing to preserve when authority, fear, and politics collide—when the lines between security and coercion, order and justice, begin to blur.
For someone who spent a lifetime wearing the cloth of his country, that distinction carries real weight. Armies exist to defend nations. But nations endure only if they retain a shared moral center. Music gives expression—and attention and contention—to that moral center. Protest songs don’t offer easy answers. They create space—to pause, to listen, and to ask hard questions we might prefer to avoid.
-snip-
What the rock icon’s new song about Minneapolis asks of us.
Mark Hertling
Jan 29, 2026
-snipping to get to what he writes specifically about Springsteen's new song-
It isn’t about soldiers going overseas, or even about war in the abstract. It is about Americans confronting Americans. It is about power exercised at home, lives lost on our own streets, and the strain placed on who we say we are—and who we aspire to be.
Springsteen has always written about place, dignity, and struggle, giving a rock inflection to the kinds of concerns that older generations had taken up in folk music (and sometimes blues, bluegrass, and country). But this song feels more inward-facing than much of Springsteen’s earlier work. It is mournful rather than strident. It doesn’t ask whether a war is just; it asks whether we are. When he sings of “snow-filled streets” and names the dead, he anchors the song in lived loss, not ideology. And when he describes authority moving through a city with weapons visible and fear close at hand, he isn’t protesting a policy so much as questioning a condition.
This represents a profound shift in protest music—and arguably in the nation itself. This isn’t a song about a war we are fighting, or about economic or racial inequality. This is a song about the values we are testing. It asks what we are willing to preserve when authority, fear, and politics collide—when the lines between security and coercion, order and justice, begin to blur.
For someone who spent a lifetime wearing the cloth of his country, that distinction carries real weight. Armies exist to defend nations. But nations endure only if they retain a shared moral center. Music gives expression—and attention and contention—to that moral center. Protest songs don’t offer easy answers. They create space—to pause, to listen, and to ask hard questions we might prefer to avoid.
-snip-
He concludes with a paragraph saying Springsteen's new song "asks us to look honestly at ourselves—first as human beings, and then as a nation—and to judge whether we have the courage to be who we ought to be."
5 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
