I’ve always been a great fan of Bruce Springsteen—both the musician and the activist. For 50 years now, The Boss has been singing the anthems of the working class in America.
Last month, Springsteen kicked off the European leg of his Land of Hope and Dreams Tour in England with this: “The mighty E Street Band is here to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ‘n’ roll in dangerous times. My home, the America I love, the America that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
Trump responded by calling Springsteen “highly overrated,” “dumb as a rock,” and a “dried out prune.”
With Donald Trump, it’s all about “dominance,” about accumulating power for its own sake. It’s about dominating Congress, manipulating the media, eviscerating elite universities, crippling the ability of law firms or federal judges to stand in his way, and silencing any dissent or debate. Even scientific debate must yield to his fixed ideological perspective.
Trump’s central campaign promise in 2024 was to dominate and deport the “criminal alien gangs” who constitute a “threat to our national security.” He declared a national emergency, citing a dubious “invasion” by Central American gangs.
Instead of targeting these elusive criminal gangs, however, Trump’s mass deportation campaign is rounding up thousands of hard-working immigrants and their families in a cruel and indiscriminate dragnet that lacks any element of common sense or compassion. One victim is a 4-year-old boy with late-stage cancer—a U.S. citizen, no less—who was sent to Honduras without his medications nor the cancer treatments that have kept him alive.
One of Trump’s top aides, Stephen Miller, summoned all the regional Homeland Security directors to the White House in late May, ordering them to ramp up arrests of undocumented immigrants to achieve a quota of 3,000 daily arrests.
The result was inevitable: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are using brutal tactics to make arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants at popular restaurants, at schools, and anywhere day laborers are found, including several Home Depot locations in LA County. A police state is now emerging in Southern California as thousands of protesters actively resist ICE. Downtown LA saw scattered incidents of protesters attempting to stop the advance of ICE vans, a brief occupation of Highway 101, and a few Waymo self-driving autos set afire. LA Metro Police and other local law enforcement agencies have arrested about 200 people.
The Trump administration also took the extraordinary step of nationalizing the California National Guard, over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, ordering 4,000 Guard troops to Southern California. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has piled on, deploying 700 Marines to LA.
Trump relishes his confrontation with Newsom and has even toyed with arresting him.
Newsom responded with a throw-down to Trump: “This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers, and the National Guard at risk.”
The governor honored the service of our troops and committed to arresting and prosecuting those who break the law but condemned Trump’s incendiary actions: “Donald Trump’s government is not protecting our communities—they are traumatizing our communities … and that seems to be the entire point.”
Newsom implored protesters to remain peaceful.
“At this moment, we all need to stand up and be held to account, a higher level of accountability. I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty—your silence—to be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him.”
It’s precisely to deny fealty to that authoritarian state that organizers plan a nationwide series of almost 2,000 “No Kings” protest rallies for this Saturday, June 14. These include a rally in front of the County Government Center on Monterey Street at 10:30 a.m. and a protest and march in downtown Atascadero at 10 a.m.
Saturday also coincides with President Trump’s 79th birthday and his $45 million military parade through Washington. Notably, the “No Kings” organizers are not planning an event in the nation’s Capital, explaining their strategy in this way: “Real power isn’t staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else. … We will make action everywhere else the story of America that day.”
Thus, the nation will witness a stark contrast this week between the millions of “No Kings” protesters throughout the country and the heavily armed ranks of America’s military—both in Washington and on duty in Southern California. Which of these visions will “dominate”?
The only way to guarantee our constitutional rights and freedoms is to speak out, to march, and, in the immortal words of the late John Lewis, to raise “good trouble.” We need to sing a new song in this “Land of Hope and Dreams”; after all, Bruce Springsteen has already composed it. Δ
John Ashbaugh will be marching with the “No Kings” rally on Saturday—will you? Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jun 12-22, 2025.
Using the inevitable moderate civil unrest from all the hippies and anti-American rioters as a pretext to put active duty troops on the ground is a great way to prepare for immediate martial law when the U.S. instigates a war in the Middle East when its ally, Israel, attacks Iran and all the oil flowing through the Straits of Hormuz comes to a halt. We would have immediate riots in the U.S., martial law will be declared, civil rights will be suspended, what a coincidence…active duty troops are already on the ground in every major U.S. city.
Now that would be a fascist scenario, ladies and gentleman. The only thing missing at that point would be these troops wearing deaths head insignia and having an officer corp wearing leather trench coats and knee high, shiny leather boots. It might be a good idea to have a backup plan and your clothes packed. We’re outta here….
Bruce sang about “the blood and hatred in the air” in The Ghost of Tom Joad. This 90’s song lamented the fact that nothing had changed since the 1930’s, and unfortunately is still as relevant today. I hope I see more than boomers at the No King protests, but authoritarianism has advanced in no small part due to the apathy of younger generations.
One reason it is more fun to be a rock star like Bruce Springsteen than a political leader is that, while you may be able to strongly influence and even control events, if the position you advocate proves disastrous, you can just move on to other things and not have to endure blame. Remember the “sex, drugs and rock and roll” celebrated in the music of the 1960’s, before they morphed into AIDS, hepatitis, meth, fentanyl and disco?. It is easier to preach from the cheap seats.
“Remember the “sex, drugs and rock and roll” celebrated in the music of the 1960’s, before they morphed into AIDS, hepatitis, meth, fentanyl and disco?”
So by that logic, the classical music of Bach, Haydn and Mozart “morphed” into the horrors of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. The movement of great American writers in the 19th century such as Emerson, Whitman and Twain “morphed” into the atrocities of the Civil War. Or the great paintings of Van Gogh, Monet and Picasso “morphed” into the slaughter of World War I.
Nonsense. Artists are simply a reflection of the society they live in. It may be why there are so few in this period of history.
Steve:
What are you Boomers ever going to be able to contextualize your entire lives? The only reason you cold express yourselves politically and artistically was because your parents, my late grandparents, fought, died, and won WWII and bequeathed you the strongest and richest country in the history of mankind. You could literally spend your entire lives smoking dope or drinking yourselves into oblivion, and still come out on top. You people didn’t do a damn thing we can thank you for. You leave this country a smoldering mess. Maybe younger people aren’t going to your “protests” because they cant stand being near any of you.
Try standing around on a corner waving a snarky protest sign now, in today’s economy. It’s not possible, who has time? Oh, that’s right, retired Boomers. Everyone else is too exhausted from working two or three low paying jobs.
In the end, you Boomers aren’t even “protesting,” what you are doing is performance art. When it’s over, you’ll toss your sign into your Tesla or BMW, go eat foie gras, sip wind and smoke cigars, all while slapping yourselves on your backs in your 1.25 million dollar, perfectly restored Craftsmen bungalow, to finally lower the curtain and climb back onto the moral crosses you like to think you bare. You know who really bare crosses? The poor. That’s right, we subsidize everything you have that we don’t and never will. We will not know good health in old age, we will not know upward mobility, we will not know social security, and we will not know Medicare.
It has to be tough being a white Boomer, after all, you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. You poor dears. In Buddhist terms, you may be the first generation of actual Bodhisattvas. Do show us misbegotten souls the light, won’t you? I mean who wouldn’t want to emulate your generation’s habits, its alcoholism, its drug addiction, its divorce rate, its sexism, its violence, its neglect, and its chain smoking. Without those virtues, what would life be? Who DOESN’T want to spend their entire lives in therapy, as many of us have, vacillating between thoughts of suicide or homicide by the minute? Can one even imagine a life NOT dragging that baggage around? Instead, going to “protests,” walking their dog, owning a house on the coast, getting restful sleep, painting, baking, or what ever you people do.
It must have been born, victorious, at the close of WWII with the world’s most powerful nation, to the very end, waiting on you hand food, by the programs and institutions your dead parents created. Your parents generation were literally eating shoe leather and selling off their children during the Great Depression and from that, never wanted any of you or their posterity (us) to experience that again. And yet, through your generation’s negligence and mismanagement, have now condemned the rest of us repeat the hard times they went through that you completely skipped. Did a single one of you actually know any deprivation, if only for a moment? If the drought continues in the Midwest, we may actually experience another Dust Bowl.
Your generation, the “Be Here Now” set, could have cared less about the future and lived like two of the Three Little Pigs, having a blast until the very end until you can’t. It brings great pleasure to many of us watch you freak out as all the social engineering projects you spent your lives trying to bring about, go right out the window. And now you want the rest of us to shed so much as a single tear because a fascist just got voted into office? Sorry, not going to happen. Why should we care? What do we have to lose? What rights do the poor really have anyway? Some of us actually want Trump to DOUBLE DOWN on his fascism. I think the most awesome thing I ever say in my life just happened, a senator just got manhandled and cuffed like a common criminal. These politicians aren’t above the law. I wish more of them would be arrested and actually prosecuted for fraud.
Trump and his administration is cleaning up the mess the excesses of your generation’s liberal idealism created. Borders aren’t real? Are you insane? Waves of illegals invading the U.S.? Are you kidding? Who are these people? Why are they burning the American flag? I’m poor, old, and will most likely die that way, but one thing I won’t do is burn our flag. As much as there is to criticize the USA, burning the flag is a bridge too far, especially for illegals or the American born descendants of them. They should rapidly be put on a plane and flown as far from the U.S. as possible, screw due process. What blows my mind is, as far as I know, not a single distinguished member of their community or ethnicity stood up for public order. They’ve all been quiet. They secretly wish for the downfall of the very country that gave them what they have. Why are their leaders quiet or actually on the side of flag burners? It’s guilt by omission. This really shows who’s side they stand on. They don’t have to condone booting illegals out, but not condemning civil disorder, looting, and rioting is terrible. They may be the largest ethnic group in California and as far as I can tell, not a single public figure of theirs has said a word to try and bring order back to LA. If they don’t like deportations, vote candidates in that represent their interests. Oh wait, a huge portion can’t because they are here illegally. Perhaps that is why they are actually angry, they see their community as massive and expect massive representation in politics, but don’t because its only a small portion of their community that can actually vote. I think that would piss me off too, lol. That’s actually pretty funny and the only recompense I can find out of the whole thing.
@John: You sound like the ignorant rednecks from the 60s burning Beatles records and calling longhairs commies. The folkies like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie were the soundtrack for the civil rights and union movements, just as rock & roll unified a generation against the hypocrisy of war, religion and ‘my country right or wrong.’
@Fly: You do not know me. I do not conform to your generalizations about boomers. With a developmentally disabled son, I worked my entire life fighting the eugenicist establishment to get him included in society, in addition to the extra care required. We did not all have it so easy. Although I benefitted from the programs set up by FDR and Kennedy, the Reagan/Bush years took it all away. Your ‘greatest generation’ endured a depression, but it ENDED! They all retired at or before 65 with pensions that don’t exist now. Our recession started in the 80s and never stopped; the rich still are not satisfied that enough wealth has been redistributed upwards.
Steve:
You sound disappointed the Great Depression ended, you should be glad that your parents made it out of it (if you are an actual Boomer). That same generation also put a man on the moon just for fun. Considering all they went through and all they gave to this country, they deserved every penny of any pension they may have had. Yes, we need defined benefit pensions in the private sector as much as they are prevalent in the public sector.
@Steve Felten (see, I got the spelling right): As a former hippie, I don’t recall ever being called a “commie”, although I do remember references to “longhair” by my parents as they hectored me to get a hair cut. I do recall returning Viet Nam veterans being called “baby killers” and the like, although many of those using the term later forgot their earlier slurs, and claimed to respect and support veterans. Although I marched against the war, and worked for McGovern, I had friends who went to Viet Nam, and I knew that they would not kill children.
John D:
“…although many of those using the term later forgot their earlier slurs, and claimed to respect and support veterans.”
Perfect. We call these people “Chicken hawks.” “Hawks” because they haven’t found a war they didn’t like, and “chickens” because they’ll send yours, mine, and any other young man (or woman) to do die in one, but not their own sons or selves. In plain English, they are hypocrites. If they had to send their own sons or daughters to go fight and die in yet another one of their manufactured wars, we would probable never have war. But they don’t, instead, they get to parade around as they do in their latest manifestation, the “No Kings” march, and give speeches attesting to their fealty to the values in the words of the Pledge of Allegiance. Meanwhile, back in their Washington office, they conduct inside trading and enrich themselves on the profits of the weapons manufacturers they send defense contracts to and who give them campaign contributions. In these same Washington offices, they create law after law to water down our civil rights. In these Washington offices, they prostrate themselves in front of bankers, like cats in heat, begging to bail out these banks anytime, anywhere, for the slightest campaign contribution or bribe. While naming streets after slain civil rights activists, they never say a word of their own grandparent’s ethnicity or their own illegitimate children (see Strom Thurmond or any other of your local, state, or federal politicians of the Boomer generation). Their life’s ambition is to be White because as Boomers, they come from an era where Whiteness did come with privilege. God forbid these aged politicians should come from any of the waves of immigrants to American that occurred in their parents or grandparent’s era. Your obsession as a Boomer of any mixed ethnicity is to be as White as possible. If this means bombing brown or yellow people, so be it. And this is what your generation has done, John. You’ve bombed the living sh_t out of the world. Like your local bully beating up scrawny little kids, it makes you feel like tough guys. Now that there’s actually tough guys on the block, China and Russia, you are only left with your own family members, us, the poor and working class. You are the drunk father who comes home, gives his wife a black eye, kicks the dog, and beats the kids. Your generation are scum. If you look at the pictures of your “No Kings” march, its all grey haired people. Why? Well, for one, you make the rest of us sick. and two, no one else has the time or money to concern themselves with things of a higher order, namely our conscience. Every day I wake up, it pains me that there is little I can do about anything. I can’t change my financial condition nor can I change all the violence going on. And then I get to see a generation of whom I call basically “trust fund babies,” waving signs at their boutique protests telling people like me, as Steve Felten, a self-appointed representative of all that is good, has in his earlier response to my post in this thread, “apathetic.” Boomers are not this nation’s moral compasses. If anything, they are the bane of this country and the very ones most of us hold responsible for the terrible shape our country has. Who signed the Commodities Futures Trading Act? Boomers. Who deregulated banks? Boomers. Who sent every scrap of our industrial capacity overseas ? Boomers? Who forged the chains we now live in? Every link was made by a Boomer. You are the problem, not us. Now that most of you are too old to hold office, it’s too late even if you were able to reflect on what your generation did to the rest of us and wanted to repent. What your generation did to the memories of your parent’s generation is even worse. You have ruined every single one our lives yet strut around like peacocks, and dare to moralize at all?? Where does this sense of arrogance come from? What sacrifices or deprivation did your generation engage in, aside from Vietnam veterans, that would make you think you have anything to offer? In the span of one generation, yours, you destroyed our country. We are poor, in debt, and on the verge of either civil war or collapse. All of you need to shut your mouths, with the exception of Oliver Stone. Stop marching, stop preaching, get off your crosses, go away and take your money with you because in the end, that is all you really wanted. You didn’t care about any generation other than yours. Well guess what? Payback is a bit_h. You marched alone, look at the photos. You will go down in infamy, right up there with Benedict Arnold, the Rosenbergs, Tokyo Rose, and Judas Iscariot. You will forever be looked back at as what your generation is, the most spoiled generation that ever lived. All this chaos you see in the streets is an attempt to clean up your mess. Get the f__k out of here. We have a lot of work to do and we will do it alone because while you shake your finger at us in the media or your lame marches, we are a majority. We are an actual silent majority. As FDR said in relation to those in opposition of his New Deal polices, “I welcome their hatred.” So please, liberal, rich, Boomers, go ahead and disparage your “basket of deplorables” more. Look what just happened, lol. You now have a far right administration. You go to your graves having created your worst nightmare. Both your kids, my generation, and your grandkids generation, are doomed to lives of poverty and climate collapse. This is your work. Let me say it again just in case you didn’t hear it…THIS IS ALL YOUR WORK. While your parents went to their graves knowing they gave their lives were not in vain, yours are. And again, it’s because you never meant what you said, whether in your literature or music. What you really cared about was money, and that’s it. Well, you definitely got it. Each and everyone of you are Cronus, you ate your children.