For Independence Day 2025...The Long Walk Home

image from the official "Long Walk Home" music-video

July 4, 2025

Say goodbye...and hello; it's Independence Day 2025 here in the U.S.A. Tonight the fireworks and/or drones will be hailin' and/or sailin' all over the place, forcing a light into all those left stranded - or worse - as "Dear Leader"'s "big, beautiful bill" now becomes the newest law of this hard land.

Meanwhile, last night, on another continent, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's "Land of Hope and Dreams" Tour reached its end. What originally had been planned as just a spring/summer series of make-up dates for postponements on their 2023-24 tour became - unfortunately out of necessity - something far more important and special. As I wrote shortly after this tour launched, and the significance of what Springsteen and his band were doing at this year's May-July gigs quickly became clear, "No other major musical stars - nobody else famous in rock, pop, hip-hop, soul/R&B, and/or country - have yet mounted a tour where at every show the theme of resisting and surviving the Trump administration's agenda is explored so deeply and overtly throughout the evening."

Hey, remember how many of us, especially thanks to the early, astute online insight of Stevie Van Zandt, could see the connection between the structure and tightness of the 2023-2024 shows with the E Street Band and what Bruce previously delivered on his own with Springsteen on Broadway? Well, the 2025 "Land of Hope and Dreams" Tour, while also continuing to be very tightly structured, connected strongly to Springsteen on Broadway in another way, too, through what Bruce said back in 2018 during each nightly Broadway introduction before performing "The Ghost of Tom Joad." In the version of Springsteen on Broadway filmed for Netflix and released as an official recording, culled from Broadway performances that occurred in mid-July 2018 during the first Trump presidency, that introduction went as follows:

"I never believed that people come to my shows, or to rock shows in general, to be told anything, but I do believe that they come to be reminded of things... to be reminded of who they are at their most joyous, at their deepest, when life feels full. It's a good place to get in touch with your heart and your spirit. It's good to be amongst the crowd, to be reminded of who we are and who we can be collectively. And music does those things pretty well. Sometimes, they can come in pretty handy, particularly these days when some reminding of who we are and who we can be isn't such a bad thing.

"I refer back to the weekend of the March For Our Lives when we saw all those young people in Washington and citizens all around the country remind us of what faith in America, and what real faith in American democracy...how sacred that is. That weekend, you just saw what it actually looked and felt like, and it was just encouraging to see all those people out on the street, and all that righteous passion alive in the service of something good, to see it still there at the center of the beating heart of our country, in spite of what've been going through. And it was a good day; it was just one good day.

"But it was a necessary day, because these are times when we've also seen folks marching, and in the highest offices of our land, who want to speak to our darkest angels, who want to call up the ugliest and the most divisive ghosts of America's past, and they want to destroy the idea of an America for all. That's their intention. That's what we've been seeing in the outrage of the broken families along the border and in hate-filled marches on American streets this year... things I never thought I would see again in my lifetime, things that I thought were dead and gone forever, on the ash-heap of history.

"We've come too far and worked too hard. Too many good people paid too high a price, paid with their lives, to allow this to happen now. There's been too much hard work done, and sacrifice.

"There's a beautiful quote by Dr. [Martin Luther] King that says, '...the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.' It is important to believe in those words and to carry yourself and to act accordingly, to live with compassion. Have faith in that what we're seeing now is just another hard chapter in the long, long, ongoing battle for the soul of the nation."

So on this 4th of July, I remain very grateful to Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band for acting accordingly, providing me - and us - yet again with that "righteous power" of art and music when it's most needed, and for indeed reminding us once more of who we are and who we can be collectively. And I wish all of those true, beloved patriots a peaceful, pleasant Independence Day, a safe journey homeward, as well as continued safety here at home, moving forward.

Of course, after today's barbecues and tonight's fireworks and drone-shows are over, all of us concerned U.S. citizens still have much more work cut out for us. But at least now we have some more great "rock-and-roll in dangerous times" to accompany us in our struggles together. Turn it up...