From the war against disorder, from the sirens night and day, from the fires of the homeless, from the ashes of the gay, democracy is coming to the USA.

We used the song Democracy in the USA a lot on this podcast, and you were telling me recently

that you have something of a complicated relationship with it. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Yeah, it's funny. You know, it's a song that we've used, I think, quasi-ironically a number of times

on the show. And also because I like the song. I mean, this is the other thing. It's an incredibly beautiful song. And I think it

becomes more beautiful when you learn a bit about how it was conceived and what his thinking was

behind it. But, you know, it's funny to go through some of the stanzas in it and see that kind of,

you know, on their own out of context, they actually resemble things that we have complained about

on this show. You know, and it's almost, you know,

cringe-worthy to think of myself, you know, at age 18 or whatever, playing the song to

celebrate Obama's primary victory in front of these kind of small-time Hamilton patricians who

were going to the, the Leonard Cohen concert in Hamilton, Ontario.

I was thinking about this song on election night because of the verse,

I guess it's the last one, where he says,

I'm sentimental if you know what I mean.

I love the country, but I can't stand the scene.

I'm neither left or right.

I'm just staying home tonight, getting lost in that hopeless little screen.

And the thing about that is, you know,

if Chris Saliza or someone like that was a poet and they were like, this is, this line out of context is like the fix, but just like as poetry, you know. And the song in many ways really

shouldn't work. Seen, I think, from the most obvious angle, it is a kind of politics, what a concept song.

You know, it's apparently a celebration of a very idealized vision of American democracy that doesn't really exist.

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