WAS: What Adults are Saying about the Promised Land

Springsteen knew it and made it central to his persona. Is it all gone?

Wel’ the dogs on Main Street howl cause they understand

If I could take one moment into my hands

Mister I ain’t a boy, no, I’m a man

and I believe in a Promised Land

Like many of his era Springsteen wrote about a place we used to warmly call “our country.” One that was filled with endless possibility especially in the twin aftermaths of Vietnam and Watergate. When releasing “Promised Land” on his historic 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town, he (already a decade into a long, continuing career) announced that the world was for the taking and he and bandmates would chase it with vigilance. Take it they did all the way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His pursuit became a model of sorts that others used (knowingly or not) to chase their own piece of a life in the promised land.

His lyrics galvanized a generalized belief that a still young American population used as back-pocket motivation. While it was unquestionably true then that men and Whites (as a whole) could get better ROI for its energy than others, by the time of Darkness…, few Americans who were not White or male would be barred from pursuing their promised land solely on the basis of race or gender. That was until a mere two years later when America invited into the White House one Ronald Reagan and his culturally ruinous “us vs. them” brand of domestic politics.

Slowly at first this shift alarmed but didn’t interfere with people and whatever promises we sought. For decades, Americans imperfectly lived, loved, worked, divorced, embezzled, committed adultery, bought time shares, coached youth sports, supported public schools, dressed homes for holiday, threw parties, attended July 4th parades, drove Volvos (lots of them for awhile) and dozens of other things that were both our desires and a little piece of promise pursuit. For those needing a motivational refresher the “Promised Land” ethos was abundant in culture and philosophy just as it has been since the beginnings of the nation and the first time it was warped into something artificially political like Monroe’s Manifest Destiny. Again, wholly imperfect but for awhile it worked and America was not yet an endless stress ball of hegemony, corporate con-games or economic injustice.

Obviously much has changed. Just like sexual climax or bankruptcy, Reagan’s us vs. them conviction started slowly before a rapid acceleration where now its manifested in forms so grotesque that Dante couldn’t have imagined it for the Inferno. What started 45 years ago as a distinctive political belief has now morphed (after four decades of GOP “management”) into a nearly complete moral failure.

To cluck approvingly today for the suspension of Habeus Corpus or passively watch White House officials tease suffering victims at the hand of its own incompetence is not a political statement. Its a moral one—and an ugly one at that. It’s departed from a place where generally we permitted all their idiosyncratic exercise of freedom to one where to be “free” should now follow the patterned bellows of a handful of mad men and women. While we didn’t get to this time and place overnight, we did seal it with at least passive endorsement in our most recent election. This is hardly the body politic exercising its hand in the democratic process. It is citizens offering their votes by proxy so that more of us will made be immoral—in the same unhappy, tragic image as those flushing their civic exercise.

Of course all of that calls into question America as the promised land—now and for the future. As an example: In a country where the majority of White Americans are no more than two generations removed from immigrating descendants, its astonishing to observe such wide anti-immigrant sentiment. Sure, we can discuss why and those learned in the media/politics connection will point to the brands of propaganda now dressed as “news.” There is much truth to that. But the promised land a la Springsteen was one where unlike Orwell’s Winston, we were not actively buffeted by American thought police. Yet, we let our own thoughts and morality to become suffocated by what was originally a point of politics to now one of a cult. The downside of this and the simple abject intellectual laziness required for this to happen, can’t be succinctly summarized. A million loose strings connected to two million trap doors had to be pulled for it to happen. And it has.

When Americans put themselves uncomfortably under the microscope two things stand out above all else: an over-the-top pursuit of dough and expansive cognitive laziness. This reduces many Americans to less than the components which construct them. A life without sufficient reflection is hardly a life worth pursuing. This is told by many stripes of theologians and philosophers. Americans too craftily like to skip that part of the universe’s karma—perhaps even wrongly thinking that what lies in our promised land insulates us from danger. As seen today on the country’s streets, it doesn’t.

Maybe that’s why a mere two year after Darkness..., Springsteen’s release of the double-album The River included the haunting “The Price You Pay.” Again prescient, this time he expressed (ironically, just as Ronald Reagan was being elected), that pursuit of anything promising carried with it a price. A price and associated pursuit that eventually goes bonkers:

Now they come so far and they've waited so long
Just to end up caught in a dream where everything goes wrong
Where the dark of night holds back the light of the day
And you've gotta stand and fight for the price you pay

Here its linked that both pursuit of any promise and its price share a universal truism—it is bounded by fight. Now, encased in a self-hewn intellectual laziness, America once again has a significant moral choice. To mobilize this fight, resist and work for a country concept that is rapidly vaporizing, or to let our “price” rise to an astronomical level where even if we make the ultimate social purchase, were not even sure what we’ve bought? What Springsteen the lyricist might do even at the advanced, but still spry, age of 75 would be easy to guess. Perhaps we should all follow that lead.