Don’t You Weep: The Bruce Springsteen Cure for Despair

Bruce Springsteen

One year down, three to go.

Season one of the Trump unreality show was a fire that wouldn’t stop burning, set against the apocalyptic backdrop of real California wildfires that consumed over a million acres in the fall. Huge tracts of psychic energy, funds of hope and goodwill, were consumed by the effort to make sense of what was happening to the nation, to respond meaningfully, and to maintain sanity. Millions ranted about the “arsonist in chief,” yelled at their televisions, at their laptops, yelled on Facebook and Twitter or at protests in the street. Some, it is true, retreated into permanent Cat Video Land. But almost everyone was looking for evidence of hope.

Twelve years ago, New Orleans was still on its knees after Katrina. I remember January