Do you remember when Bruce Springsteen wrote that rousing anthem to honor Laken Riley?
Me neither.
But on Wednesday, he released “Streets of Minneapolis,” an ode to the mob that impedes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from enforcing federal laws passed by our representatives and as ordered to by the duly elected president of the United States. That’s another way of saying that Springsteen wrote a love song to fascists who believe that mob violence should act as a veto on the law. (RELATED: Peaceful Protestors Don’t Carry Loaded Pistols)
That’s another way of saying that Springsteen wrote a love song to fascists who believe that mob violence should act as a veto on the law.
“Streets of Minneapolis” offers no colorful descriptions of how this law-breaking mob beat a conservative provocateur bloody, stole a thousand-dollar camera from a journalist, disrupted a church service, or repeatedly attacked ICE agents. That a video showing an armed Alex Pretti, lionized in Springsteen’s song, spitting and hurling abuse at federal agents before he kicked out their taillight, came out the same day as “Streets of Minneapolis” proves inconvenient. (RELATED: Was That Church Attack the Tipping Point in Minnesota?)
In Bruce’s sonic telling, federal ICE officers, and not Somali illegal immigrants, are “occupiers,” and federal ICE officers, and not the mob vandalizing their cars and throwing rocks at them, are the “thugs” (if the man in this video was not a thug, then who is?). Springsteen even depicts federal law enforcers as “Trump’s private army.”
This seems like not just distortion but projection. A “private army” does exist in Minneapolis. Reports trace money from Neville Roy Singham, George Soros, and others, less known, to the groups committed to the organized chaos that helped lead to the deaths of Pretti and Rene Good, who lost her life after she hit an ICE agent with her car while attempting to flee. (RELATED: Who’s Paying for the Minneapolis Protesters?)
“Streets of Minneapolis” name-drops Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and “King Trump.” In characteristic leftist, cops-are-criminals, Shawshank Redemption fashion, it depicts the villains as the heroes and the heroes as the villains. The song omits that part about ICE agents heroically risking life and limb to arrest child-molester illegal aliens or Somali immigrants ripping off billions from the taxpayers. “If your skin is black or brown, my friend,” Springsteen sings. “You can be questioned or deported on sight.”
Is this true that the federal government just randomly deports people because of their skin color?
This notion is born of an ideological hallucination. People hopped up on politics often see the world through a lens more distorted than if they had taken nine tabs of LSD. Springsteen inserts this strawman to demonize his opponents and beatify those taking his side.
Bruce, like every other left-wing liar, needs to create a fiction to obscure the facts. The facts tell us that Minneapolis owes ICE a thank you for apprehending Mexican Hernan Cortes-Valencia, a convicted child molester ordered to leave this country during the Obama administration; Laotian Sriudorn Phaivan, an equal-opportunity weirdo convicted of strongarm sodomy of a boy and strongarm sodomy of a girl; Somali Abdirashid Adosh Elmi, a convicted murderer; El Salvadoran Gilberto Salguero Landaverde, a convicted triple murderer; and Sierra Leonean Mariama Sia Kanu, who counts two murders, four DUIs, and three larcenies and burglaries on her record.
When Bruce sings, “we’ll take our stand for this land and the stranger in our midst,” does he mean Phaivan, Elmi, Landaverde, and Kanu?
If “Streets of Minneapolis” lyrically paid homage to ICE agents rather than their tormenters, then most would immediately recognize it as a bad song, something above Neil Old’s “Let’s Impeach the President” but below Rednex’s version of “Cotton-Eyed Joe.”
The song screams cliché, and not just because Springsteen released a similar (better) song, “American Skin (41 Shots),” upon the death of Amadou Diallo more than two decades ago. One can forgive a casual fan for confusing “Streets of Minneapolis” with “Streets of Philadelphia,” “Streets of Fire,” “Racing in the Street,” “Out in the Streets,” “Backstreets,” and any number of other numbers written by the vocalist of the E Street Band. This blogger, noticing “streets” invading more Bruce songs than “night,” decided to compile a best-of list of Boss songs involving roads, highways, streets, and such. It’s lengthy.
Bruce Springsteen has streets on the brain — and politics. When you mix rock and politics, you get politics. We need less of that right now.
READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn:
The Fred Phelps Left Invades the Churches
Making Sense of ‘Autistic Barbie’
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Died This Week — By Suicide
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