youtube/watch?v=EPhWR4d3FJQ&feature=kp When Born in the U.S.A. burst on the scene in 1984, Id stopped believing there would be any coherent, constructive Vietnam veterans movement in this country. Id spent most of my first decade back home working for that, helping vets on issues like unemployment, education, discharge upgrades, housing, and incarceration, but now needed to move on, start a career, do well as a husband and father. I wasnt a spokesman for my community of vets, but I also knew that given our shabby treatment by our government and the public, we really hadn’t been able to develop any kind of community in the first place. But then I heard Bruces voice, his anger and pain on that title song, and I realized that somebody cared what we were going through, somebody knew, as he put it, that Vietnam turned this whole country into that dark street, and unless were able to walk down those dark alleys and look into the eyes of the men and the women that are down there and the things that happened, were never gonna be able to get home.... Amen to that. Thirty years on, that song still resonates, that message still stings, that anger feels right. Hopefully it wont take another thirty years for the U.S.A. to get its shit together. Doug Bradley
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 11:17:46 +0000