Read on Twitter
I've been thinking about this John Prine song a lot lately. It's about being betrayed by someone you love, except that the someone you love is your country.
"I really love America," Prine once said about this song. "I just don’t know how to get there anymore."
He was drafted in '66, but stationed in W. Germany, not Viet Nam. "I was in the army, but I never dug a trench," he once sang. When he got back to Chicago, he performed "Sam Stone," about a heroin addicted vet, at his first live show.
That song and "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" are from his first album. "The Great Compromise" and "Take the Star Out of the Window" (about a guy returning home with blood on his high school ring) are from his second.
The Great Compromise (shoutout to my HS history teacher Mr. Johnson) was a way of a papering over America's original sin, keeping the union together for a little while by denying the humanity of enslaved peoples.
Listening to this song made me think how much of what I love about America was forged in response to enormous crises. The Civil War, the Great Depression, Viet Nam, the Civil Rights movement — all forced a reconsideration of who we are, and a recommitment to what we could be.
Anyway, he's another John Prine song. More fun, but it's still about struggle, faith and wondering if you're gonna see tomorrow. Inspirational lyric: "When we get through we'll make a big wish that we'll never have to do this again."
