The United States needs to recover its national story
The Bruce Springsteen show on Broadway shows why active citizenship can weaken the grip of tribalism
There’s a moment in his Broadway show when Bruce Springsteen steps away from the microphone in the middle of a song. He continues to play his guitar, continues to sing, and walks to the edge of the stage. What’s he doing? It took a moment for me to realise that he was trying to create a sense of living-room community in a theatre on 48th Street. He wanted his audience to hear him singing directly. With no filter. Nothing but air between his mouth and our ears.
The notion of community permeates the show. At the beginning, Springsteen describes his “magic trick” as his ability to demonstrate that “us” actually exists. The specific “us” to which he is referring is not entirely clear. But for the artist who describes his life’s work as “judging the distance between American reality and the American dream,” my mind immediately turns to the US as a national community.
The bonds that hold the American community together are not a shared religion or ethnicity. They aren’t even a shared life experience. Instead, the US has been a community because of a shared national understanding. It’s a creedal nation, the core tenets of which include a belief in the equal dignity of all people. Populism is damaging the core of the American identity. It seeks to build walls to keep out immigrants. It attacks the idea of religious liberty through hostility toward Muslims. It attacks institutions, including the free press. Rather than bind Americans together, its leaders cultivate angry tribalism and white grievance.
Springsteen spoke to this in his show. “I’ve seen things over the past year on American streets that I thought were resigned to other, uglier times — things I never thought I’d ever see again in my lifetime,” he said. “Folks trying to normalise hate” and “appealing to our darkest angels, calling upon the most divisive, ugliest ghosts of our past.”
There’s a sense in which Springsteen himself is evidence that tribalism need not endure. A cultural icon who has commanded the stage for decades speaks to our desire for a community not based on tribe, but instead based on culture and an artistic interpretation of American life. The more public figures who model this form of active citizenship, the weaker the grip of tribalism will be.
To overcome populism, the US needs to recover its national story, providing a counter to the zero-sum narrative of tribal conflict put forward by the populist Right. A cadre of leaders and public figures reinforcing US’ core narrative could do the trick.
Springsteen and his audience give me hope that tribalism will pass — that the story can be recovered. Or, in his words, that “the country we carry in our hearts is waiting.” Some days back I saw a young boy in a restaurant shouting at his mother when, despite his best efforts, she could not understand how to send an audio message. “Mom, you need not try to be all savvy. Just leave it and make a normal call,” was his unwelcome suggestion.
I didn’t like what he said, but, at the same time, his rude tone made me feel guilty as on many occasions I too have lost my patience while helping my parents understand new