Bruce Springsteen on the opening night of his European Tour in Manchester:

“The America I love, the America I’ve written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.

Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!

His intro to House of a Thousand Guitars:

The last check, the last check on power after the checks and balances of government have failed are the people, you and me. It’s in the union of people around a common set of values now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. At the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other.

His speech before My City of Ruins was spot-on:

“Now, there’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now.

In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.

In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.

In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers, they’re rolling back historic Civil Rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society, they’re abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.

They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.

A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.

They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American. The America that I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people.

So we’ll survive this moment.

Now, I have hope because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like. But there’s enough.”