“Let’s Vote to Save This Land” and “America Renews Itself”
Image by Getty and Unsplash+.
It’s great that wealthy Democratic Party celebrities like Bette Midler and Bruce Springsteen dislike the deranged fascist lunatic atop the world’s most lethal superpower, but their stance on the United States’ 47th president falls far short of the menace posed by the Trump fascist regime.
Midler and Springsteen’s statements are incommensurate with the historical moment – a time during which, “humanity,” in the words of Refuse Fascism (RF), “is held hostage by a fascist regime that is genocidal, hell-bent on destroying the environment and which every day is bolting into place a white supremacist, theocratic, patriarchal, immigrant-bashing, science-denying, fascist America.
“Right now,” RF adds, “a fascist regime in power stands in the way of any chance at a decent future for humanity.”
“This regime,” RF rightly insists, “will not be stopped by waiting for a midterm election that [Trump operatives and allies] are actively rigging. No one should believe that a tyrant who incited—and then pardoned—the January 6th insurrectionists will respect any election he loses.”
The notion of waiting Trump out is capitulation, complicity, and advance surrender. It is, as RF says, “up to the many millions of people who do see the present existential danger to act now and make the demand TRUMP MUST GO NOW! — felt everywhere from the top to the bottom of this country.”
“Let’s Vote to Save This Land”
This is NOT how Bette Midler sees things. Look at Midler’s widely viewed new bourgeois rendition of the longtime labor-left folksinger Woody Guthrie’s iconic 1940 anti-fascist anthem “All You Fascists Bound to Lose.” The proletarian balladeer Guthrie sang about “people of every color…getting organized” to fight against fascism, “race hatred,” and capitalist “greed.” He said he’d bring his “union gun” to help those “marching across these fields where a million fascists die” to “end this world of slavery.” Woody’s focus was on the battle right now, in the present moment.
By contrast, the main theme and the main reason the fascists are “bound to lose” in Midler’s watered-down version is that “we’re gonna win the midterms…America get ready,” Midler (with a net worth of $250 million) sings, “midterms are at hand. We’ve got to stick together and vote to save this land.”
Midler says nothing about taking on racism or the greedy capitalist parasites or reaching out across racial lines to end modern slavery. She says nothing about the rest of the world.
Her focus is on bourgeois elections a half year out — a half year out while the monstrous Trump-Vance-Miller-Rubio-Hegseth-Vought regime relentlessly and right now threatens everything decent people hold dear and all prospects for a decent future.
While Woody sang from box cars and jungle camps and at labor, leftist, and civil rights rallies, Midler’s video ends with her and her fellow wealthy celebrity Barbara Hershey smiling on reclining chairs in leisure garb (holding up placards saying, “No Kings,” not “No Fuhrers” or “No Dictators” or “Remove the Dictators” or “Refuse Fascism,” or “Remove the Regime” or “Trump Must Go Now!”)
I am reminded of the Marxian historian Alan Dawley’s reference to the American ballot box as “the coffin of class consciousness.”
What Bette Midler does here is in my view rather sinister: coopting a stirring musical call for a serious people’s and proletarian fight against fascism to the project of rallying people behind ruling class candidates in a Weimar party — the dismal, dollar-drenched capitalist-imperialist Dems — that will not and indeed cannot fight fascism the way it needs to be fought.
The fact that the Republifascist party in power is subverting the elections and may even cancel them or refuse to honor their outcome make her version of “All You Fascists” doubly problematic.
“Until They Cut and Run”
This line in Midler’s version of “All You Fascists” is alarming: “Hey there all you fascists, let me put you straight When you come for the rеst of us we’ll fight you at the gate.”
Wait… for the rest of us? Shouldn’t that be for any of us?
Also problematic is this Midler lyric: “We’ll battle ICE together until they cut and run, just like in Minneapolis and when the midterms come.” There are three problems here:
+1. Trump’s fascist ICE (and Border Patrol) gendarmes have not “cut and run” in Minneapolis or anywhere else across the United States. They have re-branded after the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. ICE’s already vast network of concentration, torture, and death camps are expanding right now with massive “Big Beautiful Bill” money that is intact through and across the 2026 midterms elections. The raids and terror continue, dragooning more than a thousand of our immigrant brothers and sisters into the camps every single day.
+2. Midler here falsely conflates the often heroic and inspiring struggle against ICE waged by the people of Minneapolis with the paralyzing muck and mire of the United States’ savagely time-staggered bourgeois electoral politics.
+3. The Republifascists — the party of January 6 — have no intention of “cutting and running” in the face of the mid-terms. They are actively working to rig the elections. They may suspend or cancel them and are likely not to honor their outcomes if they are held and don’t go his way.
The Boss’s Prayer for the Killers of Iranian Civilians and American Freedom
Let’s turn to the Woody Guthrie fan and rock/soul/folk legend Bruce Springsteen (net worth of $1.2 billion) — a close friend of former US imperialist president Barack “Good at Killing People” Obama — said following the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner shooting last Saturday. During his concert in Austin, Texas, Springsteen commented as follows:
“We begin tonight with a prayer for our men and women in service overseas, we pray for their safe return…We also send out a prayer of thanks that our president, nor anyone in the administration, nor anyone attending, was injured at last night’s incident at the [White House] Press Correspondents’ Dinner….We can disagree. We can be critical of those in power, and we can peacefully fight for our beliefs. But there is no place in any way, shape, or form for political violence of any kind in our beloved United States.”
Seriously, Boss? As CounterPunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair noted:
“…praying for the safety of the volunteer military in the Middle East that is currently bombing girls’ schools, hospitals and girls’ volleyball teams is hard to square with a call against ‘political violence.’ At least two of Springsteen’s own songs, ‘American Skin (41 Shots)’ and ‘Streets of Minneapolis’ (admittedly 25 years apart), suggest that ‘political violence’ by the government against the people is pretty much endemic to our ‘beloved United States.’ (After Springsteen performed American Skin (41 Shots) about the killing of Amadou Diallo by four NYPD police officers, the NYPD refused to provide security for Springsteen’s concerts.)”
The Boss is prayerfully thankful for the physical safety of the malevolent beast who sparked January 6, when Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump tried to instigate a literal physical coup d’etat to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Recall Trump’s first action after being unconstitutionally returned to power: pardoning 1600 January 6th putschists who had been convicted for their role in the bloody attempted insurrection.
(How thankful is Springsteen for the continuing existence of the leading White House fascist and correspondents’ dinner attendee and survivor Stephen “We are the Storm” Miller, the chief architect of the Trump regime’s racist mass deportation campaign?!)
“Our president?” That’s how Springsteen refers to Donald “Poisoning Our Blood” Trump, the debased, deranged, depraved, and deeply illegitimate monster sitting atop the most lethal superpower in world history? That’s how Springsteen thinks about the orange-brushed tyrant who has unleashed his masked Gestapo thugs, ICE and Border Patrol, on our immigrant brothers and sisters, sweeping up a thousand people a day into an ever-expanding network of concentration, torture, and death camps? That’s how Springsteen thinks about the president whose henchmen killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis…the president who wanted to use the armed forces to drown the George Floyd Rebellion in blood…the president who told more than 800 US generals and admirals last September that the United States’ top adversary is “the enemy within,” meaning his political opponents and critics?
This is Springsteen’s take on Mein Trumpf, an existential menace to all humanity, the blood-soaked war criminal and wannabe strongman-for-life who is undoubtedly scheming along with his fascist toadies about how to turn his insane war on Iran into a pretext for cancelling or refusing to honor the outcomes of the 2026 mid-terms (see liberal historian Timothy Snyder’s April 6th Substack essay, titled “The Next Coup Attempt”)?
For real, Boss?
“Our men and women in service overseas”? In service to what and who, exactly, Boss? To “we the people,” in a monumentally criminal war opposed by the preponderant majority of US Americans — a war during which the fascist president has repeatedly and criminally threatened to destroy an entire nation of 93 million people?
“Our beloved United States”? Really, Boss? That’s how you think about the arch-plutocratic, savagely unequal, racially hyper-segregated, and cancer-drenched mass shooting, mass incarceration and fossil-fueled Ecocide capital of the world, a nation whose giant military empire has overturned dozens of governments and killed tens of millions of people abroad since 1945 — a nation currently under the rule of genocidal fascists put back in power by a fascist Supreme Court, by racist voter suppression and by a deplorable (imperialist Hillary got something right) base of racist, sexist, and nativist Amerikaners?
Give us a break, Boss. Tell it to your guy Barack Hollow Resistance Obama, not us.
“Find One Face That Ain’t Looking Through Me”
Leafletting literally thousands of Springsteen concert attendees outside Chicago’s United Center on behalf of RF’s demand that “Trump Must Go Now” and for a big “no work, no school” turnout on May Day two nights ago, I kept flashing back to the following passage, italicized below with interjections from yours truly – in Springsteen’s brilliant 1980s ballad “Badlands”:
Poor man wanna be rich
Rich man wanna be king
And a king ain’t satisfied
‘Til he rules everything
The last three lines fit “king” Trump.
Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you’ve gotta pay
Keep pushin’ ’til it’s understood
These badlands start treating us good
Well, the struggle to remove the insane fascist Trump regime – just for starters – must be taken up and acted on by tens of millions every day, not just 5 or 9 million people going to a “No Kings” [try No Fuhrer] rally once every five months. Keep pushing ‘til it’s understood and that we refuse to accept a fascist America.
For the ones who had a notion
A notion deep inside
That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive
Well, what’s the point of being alive if we don’t take up the real struggle against a deranged, illegitimate, and arch-criminal, mass-murderous fascist regime atop the world’s most lethal superpower, an existential menace to all humanity?
I wanna find one face
That ain’t looking through me
I wanna find one place
I wanna spit in the face of these…Badlands, you gotta live it every day.
That’s what me and my fellow RF activists were doing with the crowd outside the United Center: looking for faces not looking through us, for people ready to engage the real historical moment and really spit in the face of Amerikaner Trumpism-fascism before it’s too late. Some of those faces appeared, but far, far too few cam forward given the grave historical period we inhabit.
Despite widespread agreement that the Trump regime is fascist and out to be removed, it was a tough crowd. Many if not most of the Springsteen fans I spoke with see the notion of doing anything more to stop Trump than voting for Democrats in 2026 and 2028 — and maybe going to a weekend No Kings rally once every five months – as not really on their radar screen of life.
Under the influence of the Democratic Party, MSNOW, and leading liberal and Democratic celebrities like Obama, Midler, and Springsteen, the decent or at least non-fascist majority of US-Americans are simply not grasping the depth and the degree of the existential crisis that is tearing at the fabric of “our” government and society, with horrific implications for all of humanity. They are still even now being pulled to see the Trump regime as a temporary rightward pendulum swing that can be corrected through the normal legal and political channels. They think we can wait Trump out, a belief that requires downplaying and ignoring the supreme hazard of letting his regime stay in power. They are still captive to the “normal way of doing things” even as the regime is sweeping previously normative bourgeois democracy and rule of law into history’s proverbial dustbin.
In truth, the old normal is gone, and it’s not just because of Trump and his regime. It’s because of shifts in US and world capitalism – a system hitting its limits in ways that have brought a significant section of the American ruling class and a sizeable minority of the US populace over to the dark side of lawless fascist dictatorship.
The coming Trump fascist mutilation of the mid-terms could help move millions to a deeper understanding of the current chilling historical moment and what needs to be done to sustain hopes for a decent and indeed emancipated future. Let’s hope that’s not too late and work to make sure it isn’t.
“America Renews Itself and We’ll Get Through”
After writing the above, I came across Springsteen’s sermon to the United Center crowd at the end of his concert last Wednesday night. Two things he said seem at least consistent with the grave historical moment we are in and what is required:
+ “We’ve got a president who says he wishes nothing but ill on those who he disagrees with. I don’t want to live that way. That’s not the country I want to live in.”
+ “Find a way to take aggressive, peaceful action…say something, do something, sing something.”
+ “God bless Alex Pretti, God Bless Renee Good.”
Other than that, however, the Boss reinforced the passivity I saw in the crowd before the show by telling his fans that “these are hard times” but “we’ll make it through. Some way, somehow, America renews itself, and we’ll make it through.”
No, Boss, we won’t, not with a fascist regime atop this nation for two more years and nine months; maybe not with the regime in power another summer. It’s not clear that humanity itself will get through a full second Trump administration, given US power.
The world can’t wait Trump out! It really is like RF says: he’s got to go now!
I am struck also by the national chauvinism embedded in the notion of “America renew[ing] itself” – because that’s what “America” does, apparently, in Springsteen’s view, in Springsteen signing off with “God Bless America,” and in this statement to the United Center crowd: “America, we were built on disagreement… We were born out of arguments and disagreements over what course the country should take while we still recognized our common humanity, and our dignity, and our unity.”
The Boss might want to watch Ken Burns’ recent six-part documentary film on the American Revolution. The nation’s War for Independence was a bloody civil war full of torture and atrocities on all sides – quite different from recognizing common humanity, dignity, and unity!
That aside, the United States was born and grew through racist mass genocide, Black chattel slavery, and massive violent territorial conquest, core foundations for a rising capitalist continental empire. Let us never forget the famous words of Frederick Douglass 76 years after the formal break from England:
“Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them… My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future…What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”
Life After Trump: Is MAGA Reversible?
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Donald Trump as an individual will not define American politics forever. But MAGA may outlast him. Trump has had a transformative influence in the United States and beyond. The question is whether American politics will move past Trump, who is now 80 years old. Will we ever return to a pre-Trump world? MAGA has already reshaped the political landscape. What remains unclear is whether it represents a passing phase or a deeper structural reorientation. Institutional change is fast and reversible; cultural change is slower, more durable, and may not be reversible.
Official changes may happen sooner than we think. The pollster Nate Cohn speculates that “A Democratic Senate is a real possibility.” Trump’s disapproval ratings are climbing. Democrats would need to flip only three seats—if they hold their own—to take control of the House in 2026. The future Congress could plausibly be Democratic-controlled. And if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028—assuming Trump leaves and there is a peaceful transfer of power—two branches of government could radically change.
That may be necessary, but is it sufficient? One could imagine bureaucratic and institutional transformations and rebooting to undo the horrors of DOGE and Trump. A Democratic Congress with a Democratic president could do much—especially if it has its own governing roadmap comparable in scope and ambition to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
But Democrats should temper their current enthusiasm.
One recent poll of voters found a significant minority willing to question established historical facts. A Manhattan Institute poll, as reported by Antonia Hitchens in The New Yorker, found a significant share of young Republican voters—especially men under 50—willing to agree with survey statements suggesting the Holocaust was “greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe.”
That raises a question about the different political ecosystems of these groups. How much of the radical right’s rise is driven by individual leaders, and how much comes from underlying structural conditions? Historical comparisons—from interwar Germany and Hitler to Yugoslavia and Slobodan Milošević in the 1990s—suggest the same tension between leadership and structural breakdown.
In terms of Trump, the more complicated question is what this looks like across different layers of the conservative ecosystem. On one level, there are mainstream political and youth-oriented activities such as those associated with Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk, which operate inside conventional electoral politics and public activism. These spaces are not fringe; they largely frame their arguments in terms of standard policy debates rather than rejection of the political system itself.
In the short term, parts of Trump-era politics may still be reversible through ordinary electoral change. The current system may revert to “normal” after Trump.
At the same time, much of today’s political audience is no longer shaped by parties or institutions. The question then becomes where the boundary lies between these mainstream conservative spaces and more radical subcultures operating in parallel ecosystems. Figures such as Nick Fuentes and his supporters represent a much smaller but more radicalized world where rhetoric moves beyond conventional political disagreement into explicit rejection of democratic norms and institutions. Conservative Republicans are separate from the more radical MAGA fringes, both politically and culturally.
The continuing split within MAGA may give hope to the Democrats about taking control of the legislative and executive branches of government, but how will Democrats and others deal with the right-wing fringes of MAGA who think Trump is not right-wing enough? When Fuentes was quoted as saying: “My problem with Trump is not that he’s Hitler, my problem with Trump is that he’s not Hitler,” elections and returned institutions will not settle that.
There have been precedents of American hysteria under a charismatic leader. The McCarthy era, for example, had one subject—anti-communism and the Soviet Union. But the senator from Wisconsin quickly flamed out on national television, although his HUAC Committee existed well after his demise. McCarthyism never developed the same broad cultural following as MAGA and its radical fringe.
The structure of political culture has changed. The technological environment is unlike anything that preceded it. The internet and algorithmic media have altered the entire political process. There is no comparing Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential fireside radio chats with Donald Trump’s incessant use of social media as well as influencers like Joe Rogan.
Trump’s cultural MAGA transformation goes beyond political parties and politics. Antonia Hitchens concluded her article in The New Yorker on the new Christian-nationalist fringe by quoting a young high schooler: “If the [Republican] Party wants to kick us out, we will bail and have our own. They can kick us out and die.”
So even if the Democrats sweep the upcoming elections, they will still face deep cultural problems. Institutions can be rebuilt. Bureaucracies can be restored. Budgets can be rewritten. But political cultures do not change as quickly as government agencies. The cultural ecosystem that MAGA helped consolidate will not disappear with a transfer of power.
MAGA and its periphery are often treated as a sudden rupture, but they are better understood as the culmination of several decades of ideological and grassroots mobilization on the American right—from the anti-communism of Joseph McCarthy and the conspiratorial anti-communism of the John Birch Society to the religious nationalism of the Moral Majority, and finally to the anti-government populism of the Tea Party movement. Although they rise and fall over time, these movements are more than temporary political pop-ups.
Trump will leave American politics through age, electoral defeat, or history’s normal rotation of power. But elements of MAGA may already be less a moment in American politics than a feature of its future political landscape.
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