Monday, May 17, 2021 • 51min
Money & the American Dream
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President Obama and Bruce discuss the relationship between money and economic class, growing up with income inequality. They unpack what it meant to not be aware of your lack of economic privilege/wealth prior to a US economic and cultural shift in the 1980s.
Find the episode transcript here: http://spoti.fi/RenegadesTranscripts
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Talking about
Speakers
(3)
Bruce Springsteen
Barack Obama
Michael Douglas
Transcript
Verified
Break
Barack Obama
00:40
Benjamin Franklin
who did pretty well for himself in his day, is quoted as saying that money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more man has, the more he wants instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. Wise man Mr Franklin
?Share
01:01
Growing up in the 60s and early 70s, my family and
Bruce's
didn't have a lot and didn't expect a lot when it came to money, but we had enough. American society wasn't so stratified them. Life was still a struggle for a lot of people and the doors of opportunity were too often closed for women and people of color.Share
01:22
But thanks to strong unions and government investment, upward mobility wasn't a myth. Hard work didn't just deliver financial stability and the promise of a better life for your kids. It also provided people with a sense of dignity and self-worth.
Share
01:41
It's something that
Bruce
and I have both spent a lot of time thinking about how the American economy changed, how America
became more unequal and how in the chase for the almighty dollar we lost some of the values of community solidarity and shared sacrifice that we are going to need to make us whole once again.Share
02:08
Part of your story about the draft is you suddenly realize there's a class basis to this entire thing where how is it that the kids who are going to college don't have to go?
Share
02:28
And and and this is part of what separates
World War II
, that greatest generation from the Vietnam
generation is suddenly that sense of we are gonna hook it up so that the privileged don't have to make sacrifices for bad decisions being made in Washington. And I think there's a consciousness of that injustice that ends up disillusioning people as well.Share
Bruce Springsteen
03:01
At that age, we just took that for granted.
Share
Barack Obama
03:04
Yeah.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
03:05
That, hey, we're not up there were down here and we're playing by the rules of down here, you know, and if we want, if we don't want to go, there are street prescriptions that you're gonna have to follow to get out and it's gonna involve some crazy ass shit, you know?
Share
03:29
And uh, that was, you know, there was that nobody could afford your doctor's note so that this and that are getting back getting into college. I barely got in the first time. I don't even remember feeling aggrieved by it.
Share
Barack Obama
03:43
You don't feel some class resentment?
Share
Bruce Springsteen
03:45
No, no...
Share
Barack Obama
03:46
It doesn't be like, yeah, of course the rich kids are going to have a different deal than I have.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
03:50
Yeah.
Share
Barack Obama
03:51
And that's... Now, do you... But you don't think of that as raising questions about the whole myth of the American dream and upward mobility and anybody can make it?
Share
Bruce Springsteen
04:05
I think you know, you lost your faith in in life liberty and the pursuit of meaning for all, you lost your faith in that. And there was a little bit of... it's a little every man for himself, you know?
Share
04:25
The economic picture in
Freehold
, in my childhood, 1950s was a very, very different picture then the economic picture it runs across the country today. If you were middle class in Freehold
or if you were the wealthiest people in Freehold
, there was a street you lived, remember it was called Brinkerhoff Avenue. It was the widest tree-lined, straight in town and to find poverty, you had to really look for it and it was there usually in the communities of color, but the difference of income equality felt so much less that it never those ideas never entered your mind.Share
05:22
I know my parents who lived hand to mouth, I mean spent all the money they had this week until they had money next week and then spend all of, I mean literally, we all lived that way. We never thought of ourselves as struggling or we were closed, we had food, you know, and we had a roof over our heads though. Our home was pretty funky, but... but it was, it sat there in the midst of other homes and it wasn't that dramatically different.
Share
Barack Obama
05:56
It wasn't like you were ashamed of the house or you thought man, you know, we need to get like, you know, fancier curtains or...
Share
Bruce Springsteen
06:05
In our house, we do... I did have a little bit of that because for some reason I live in one of the oldest houses in town and for some reason... for some reason our house was, it got pretty dilapidated, you know? But even then I didn't... I never thought of myself as a poor kid. I lived in the middle of a middle-class neighborhood.
Share
Barack Obama
06:30
Part of what you're saying though is if you're growing up as a kid there and you're looking around, you think "All right, I'm pretty much on par with everybody".
Share
Bruce Springsteen
06:42
I'll be dunking down the street, you know, and...
Share
Barack Obama
06:45
And maybe his dad here, maybe his dad runs the bank, whereas my dad, you know works at the bank or works in the factory, but I don't feel as if I am somehow on the outside looking in.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
07:03
You don't feel like you're... you don't feel like you've been victimized or a victim, you know? You're aware of some class differences of course, but it seems much less dramatically than people are aware of it today.
Share
Barack Obama
07:19
But did you have folks in the, in the neighborhood where they're friends of yours are kids who said, "Man, you know, I'm getting out of here because I'm going to make a lot of money, you know, I'm gonna get that new latest, you know,
Chevy
and that's a marker, uh, that I've made it". Just this notion that you needed to make a certain amount of money or have a certain amount of stuff because if not then you were, you are a failure or you're going backwards or you hadn't been ambitious enough. Was there any of that kind of sensibility?Share
Bruce Springsteen
07:59
In my experience, it's a much more modern phenomenon. You know, I don't remember that being a huge, huge topics of conversation in high school or uh, everybody wanted to make a living. And uh, if you were gonna do really well, you were going to go to college.
Share
Barack Obama
08:17
That, that, that... that was a marker big marker if you went to college that indicated something a little bit differen.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
08:25
You were special. But that changed dramatically in the United States in the seventies. Certainly the 80s. Gilded Age 80s.
Share
Barack Obama
08:39
So we'll go fast forward a little bit and I'm in middle school and then high school in the 70s. And I see all this through the lens of my grandparents who I lived with most of the time and they are depression-era,
World War II-era
folks.Share
Bruce Springsteen
09:06
Right as my grandparents were.
Share
Barack Obama
09:08
And we lived in, uh, an apartment in
Honolulu
maybe 1200 square feet remember as an adult going back to the apartment and just thinking, you know, this is really modest.Share
09:25
But at the time I never ever thought about, "Well I don't have much". No. And I didn't consider the world foreclosed to me because I was not wealthy.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
09:46
All right.
Share
Barack Obama
09:47
And my grandparents, they wanted me to go to college and sacrificed for me to go to a prep school that more or less assured unless I got kicked out for drinking. But I'd get to college.
Share
10:02
I'm saying all this, you know not... I mean... I know we sound like these old guys, you know, man, "I used to walk to school barefoot" and "Blah blah blah". But I think you and I had the same sense that this shift took place. It's right around the 80s, early 80s, right after
Reagan
gets elected, you know, he breaks the air traffic controllers union, you've got stagflation...Share
Bruce Springsteen
10:33
Right. And you have the beginning of the kind of media that lifestyles of the rich and famous introduced, which brings the culture of materialism Into everyone's home 24 hours a day and suddenly they're being told you are not good enough unless you have this.
Share
Barack Obama
10:57
This stuff. This is right around the time that I moved to
New York
and New York
was coming out of bankruptcy. But Wall Street is surging, right? And this is when the movie Wall Street comes out and greed is good, Michael Douglas
and the high collars and the huge...Share
Bruce Springsteen
11:20
The huge cell phone, with the size of a backpack.
Share
Barack Obama
11:22
Right?
Share
Michael Douglas
11:24
And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.
Share
Barack Obama
11:40
Manhattan
in 81 82, 83, is this good perch to watch this shift in culture, it was sort of the epicenter of it. And as you said, it is suddenly in your face. Look, you, you know, it's a little bit like uh that David Mamet
play Glengarry... Glen Ross, where you've got a bunch of salesman, the guy says, "First place, uh, you get a Cadillac
, second place steak knives, third place you're fired. Right, right? There's suddenly that sense of, hey, you know... you you are either going to win or you are going to lose in this capitalist game and you don't want to be on the backside of that thing.Share
12:30
What I saw then in my peers because I did go to college the shift in terms of young people thinking if I don't get to Wall Street or white shoe law firm to punch my ticket, then I could start slipping down the scales.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
12:57
Let me give you for instance, my kids are going to school nice little school across the street from my house. I go for the first day of parents.
Share
Barack Obama
13:09
Right.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
13:10
Introduction.
Share
Barack Obama
13:11
Right.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
13:13
Sit down. And the first thing is the headmaster gets up.
Share
13:19
And he says "Now I don't want you parents worrying that when your child has his first day at
Bear Stearns
. This is the opening salvo. The kid only four! But that was, that was what was in the air at that point in time.Share
Barack Obama
13:42
You could... you could, you could feel it that anxiety and when I told people that I was going to work as a community organizer, that's the notion that, you know, having graduated from this college, that I would be taking an occupational path, that nobody could really even understand what it was. Made no sense.
Share
14:13
Now, you know, this is all happening against the backdrop of manufacturing, moving offshore unions, getting busted CEOs in the 50s and 60s are making maybe 30 times what the average guy or gal on the assembly line or making. Now he's making 300 times.
Share
14:38
So part of what happens is when suddenly in the 1980s, you have a politics, you know,
Ronald Reagan
describing government being the problem, "Let's cut taxes, let's cut public services". It also means cutting public jobs, cutting union jobs.Share
14:58
And that meant, you know, the combination of manufacturing going away and public sector jobs going away decimates the opportunity for black men in particular, but also black women to get work. And just as they're finally about post-civil rights movement, you know, crack and opened the door to get some of these jobs that previously had been banned to them, the rug gets pulled out from under.
Share
15:28
So there's a real shift in how capitalism operates and people's wages really are stagnating and the inequalities really are getting greater. So, so this isn't just a change in my mindset. It's there's an actual reality. Yes. You know, they're getting squeezed.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
15:46
And so the question is, or one of the questions is, were the 40s and 50, and somewhat 60s... Just a break in between two gilded ages?
Share
Barack Obama
15:59
And the answer is a lot of it yes.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
16:05
All right. So wrote this in 1982, I guess 81. This is Atlantic City.
Share
Speaker 5
16:16
Well, they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night
Share
16:21
Now they blew up his house too
Share
16:26
Down the boardwalk are getting ready for helluva fight
Share
Bruce Springsteen
16:32
Want to see what those record boys can do
Share
16:38
Now there's trouble busing in from out of state
Share
16:39
And early and in the eighties there's a dread in the air. Really, maybe you can trace it back to the end of the
Vietnam War
and but there's a dread in the air and in the idea of the American dream
that hadn't been present previously.Share
16:57
Because I wrote a very strange album in the early 80s called
Nebraska
. And it was this very quiet record that dealt with all of these issues at that moment. You know, now I'm writing about these things when I'm not that conscious about, you know, I mean, I'm following what I'm feeling in the air.Share
Barack Obama
17:21
Right.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
17:32
But I got a job in trying to put my money away
Share
17:37
But I got debts that no honest man can pay
Share
17:43
So I drew what I had from essential trust
Share
17:48
And I bought us two tickets on that coast city bus
Share
17:54
Well now...
Share
17:55
And that was just what I started to do with that in the combination of my father's life, my experiences in
Freehold
where I sort of saw what happens when there's some... there's some million problems and suddenly the factories moving down south and everybody is unemployed. Sort of set and the cost that and the cost that was paid by the families in town and my own move me in writing the direction that became.Share
18:25
And really I like I said, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't write it with any of the idea of it being socially conscious or with any sort of awareness. I was just telling stories that I was feeling at the time. You know?
Share
18:39
We're going out where the sands turn into gold
Share
18:44
Put on your stockings baby because the nights getting cold
Share
18:49
Maybe everything dies baby, that's a fact
Share
18:54
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Share
Break
Barack Obama
20:10
Alright, so here's I guess the question for both of us which is we start off not thinking a lot about money but thinking in your case about music and your art and I'm deliberately saying "I'm not taking that path".
Share
Bruce Springsteen
20:39
Now, that's a big choice to make, coming out of the kinds of schools you came out of and given the opportunities that you would have had. How did you come to make that choice?
Share
Barack Obama
20:53
You know, part of it was I think because my mom was a little bit of a free thinker and you know, she wandered around and become an anthropologist and went in the development work. You know, so I guess... you know... she was not all that practical to begin with and kind of a romantic and I'm sure she got put a little bit that into me.
Share
21:17
The part of it, it was... a recognition that the American dream had never been fully available to black folks. When I thought about what I should aspire to. It wasn't "Man, let me be J.
Rockefeller
. It was "Look at John Lewis
Share
Bruce Springsteen
21:50
Right.
Share
Barack Obama
21:51
Look at
Dr King
. Look at these folks who are out there trying to make the world better and open up opportunity for people. So partly because of my own need to figure out who I wasShare
Bruce Springsteen
22:09
Right.
Share
Barack Obama
22:10
Black American, that path looked to me like it was something necessary for me to do my salvation was there.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
22:20
But that's that's an interesting word, "salvation".
Share
Barack Obama
22:24
Yeah.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
22:24
Because it turns what you're doing into a redemptive exercise.
Share
Barack Obama
22:29
Right. And that's what it was for me. Yeah, I find myself in
Chicago
working with folks who are going through these struggles and asking these questions and in a very concrete way, trying to figure out "How am I working? " "How am I going to get my kid working? " "How am I going to get my kid into college, or at least into a trade? " "What's happening to the value of my house? "Share
22:53
Right there they're going through this stuff and I'm seeing it in concrete terms and that does become redemptive for me because now my story merges with theirs and the larger American story and if I can figure out how to help that community that I've now become a part of. And as it turned out, my wife, my future wife grew up in, maybe I can redeem a piece of
America
too, and making my own. Right? That that becomes my mindset.Share
Bruce Springsteen
23:24
And so those are those, I mean, those are fundamentally my own motivations and there's a deeper question of where that comes from, because it's a response to something.
Share
Barack Obama
23:35
We're trying to figure out how do we feel whole and make the world around us...
Share
Bruce Springsteen
23:41
Yeah.
Share
Barack Obama
23:42
Feel whole, right?
Share
Bruce Springsteen
23:45
Well put.
Share
Barack Obama
23:46
But the interesting thing is
Michelle
partly because she was very clear about who she was, loving parents, family community, she doesn't feel like she needs to get redeemed, she feels like I just need some money.Share
24:08
So when I met when I made her, you know, she is driving a
Saab
and she's joined a wine club and you know, she, from her perspective initially she punched her ticket. And I remember the first time she invites me to a party with a bunch of her friends and and there are all these young professionals, I am very much the misfit you know... because at the time I was one of my responses to this era, I guess I left this part out was I went in the opposite direction.Share
24:48
Yeah, I had, I had like three shirts and I had one plate and I lived in these scruffy-looking apartments and all my furniture was you know, scavenged from either the street or milk crates. I knew that their live temptation. Like if I went down the path of starting to want stuff that was a hamster wheel, you never got off of.
Share
25:21
So I'm with all these young professionals there looking all like... you know... like
Richard Gere
and American Gigolo
kind of.Share
Bruce Springsteen
25:29
That was the look!
Share
Barack Obama
25:29
You know, and uh and I walk in and my, you know, I got kind of a, I had one sports jacket that didn't quite fit me, right? But I've gotten off, you know, some discount store. Ironically, I do think it was part of my power as a politician. People could sense that
Michelle
and I had lived through and understood what it was like to have a whole bunch of student loans to pay what it was like to have some credit card debt and what it was like to have to say no to things and it wasn't an act, right?Share
Bruce Springsteen
26:16
Right,
Share
Barack Obama
26:16
And I guess the question I'm interested in, how you dealt with it was, he started off chasing music, but...
Share
Bruce Springsteen
26:27
I double it really very simply.
Share
Barack Obama
26:29
But by the time you are what, 27, 28, 30 there comes a point. What's, what's the point where you suddenly shit, I'm rich!
Share
Bruce Springsteen
26:40
Third I would 32, What happened is I signed so many bad deals, that for 10 years after I recorded, I was pretty broke, you know? But then several things happened. One in... the live concert industry began to become very lucrative. And we went out and we played a lot of shows and I had finally paid off most of my, my debts from all my stupid mistakes.
Share
27:14
And suddenly I came home one day and, and I said, "I'm rich! ", in the course of one tour. I went from, I had 20 grand in the bank when I started, I spent all my money in 1980, that's almost 10 years after I signed my record deal, that's what I had to my name. And I came home at the end of that tour was a lot more than that and... and I said, "Oh my God, as far as I'm concerned, I'm rich! "
Share
27:40
Second thought "I hate myself! " Because now now I'm in the trap, you know, before you know, and now now I'm, now I'm there, you know, and, and so my first luxury was the luxury of ignoring my money. But I remember I bought one new thing, I bought a $10,000
Chevrolet
Camaro every time I got in it I felt like I was driving in a solid gold Rolls-Royce
and I was embarrassed.Share
Barack Obama
28:23
You didn't feel good about?
Share
Bruce Springsteen
28:24
No!
Share
Barack Obama
28:25
You felt self-conscious about.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
28:26
Very self-conscious.
Share
Barack Obama
28:28
Well, the other thing is that it runs contrary to your brand.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
28:36
Yeah.
Share
Barack Obama
28:37
In terms of who you are thinking about it as both your audience and your subject.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
28:42
Yeah and who I feel like, you know, so I don't want to, I don't want to settle for that. I want that wholeness that you were talking about. That's what I'm after, you know.
Share
Barack Obama
28:56
Redemption.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
28:58
That's correct.
Share
Barack Obama
28:59
Salvation.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
29:00
So I was very, and I consider myself healthily skeptical when I started to change station.
Share
Barack Obama
29:10
Right. And as this whole atmosphere because it just accelerates, right? I mean all through the 80s into the 90s.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
29:18
Boom boom boom boom.
Share
Barack Obama
29:19
You know it is not only are you making more and more money, but the temptations of how to spend your money become more and more lavish and your peers, you know, folks in your musical stratosphere, are not quite as restrained in terms of how that money is being spent.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
29:45
Everybody, everybody has a different attitude about it and I don't, I don't really judge anybody on all I know is what...
Share
Barack Obama
29:53
I'm just wondering, I know, I'm not saying you judge what I am saying though is during this period, how are you, how are you thinking to yourself...
Share
Bruce Springsteen
30:05
How am I processing?
Share
Barack Obama
30:06
Why am I not buying a huge mansion?
Share
Bruce Springsteen
30:09
I am thinking that and I don't have the answer which is a big problem because I got to a place where I said "I want a home, a home is a part of that wholeness. "
Share
Barack Obama
30:24
Right.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
30:26
I can't find one, I can't get one, I can't buy one. Right? And I realized, "Oh, I, I get it, I get it, I get it. Uh, I can't buy one because I don't deserve one". You know
Share
30:42
A car. why do I feel bad? I don't deserve it. Why don't I have a partner in a home life and children and satisfactions of my own? But I don't deserve any pills. When I finally made some money, it forced me to interrogate myself about who I was. I was very conscious about remaining at least I remained physically, emotionally, mentally spiritually, a part of the community that I came from. That was really important to me.
Share
31:25
And I stayed in
New Jersey
. I hung out in the same bars, played in the same bars on the weekends when I could, you know, I had the same group of friends and I probably took it to an extreme. But looking back on it, I would rather have taken those things to an extreme than gone the other way.Share
31:50
I'm interested in the story that I want to tell and I know that that story and my very self is inexplicably connected to the community, the people and the place that I came from. And if I sever that connection, I've lost something and I've lost something essential.
Share
32:12
So I'm skeptical moving forward very, very carefully and tiny steps by tiny steps until I remember I bought a house in, in in the most exclusive community in this little part of
New Jersey
. And I felt terrible about, right first night I'm in that house, I'm like, "What the fuck have I lost my fucking mind? Am I going crazy? What am I doing in this place? "Share
32:49
You know? But what I realized was looking back on it now, if you drove past the house is a nice lawn and it's a nice sort of upscale, middle-class house. We raised our kids in it for 30 years...
Share
Barack Obama
33:04
But it's not the
Hearst Castle
.Share
Bruce Springsteen
33:05
No, it's not, you know? And, and so and I realized that part of it, it was a big house. But what did I hope to do? Fill it. That was why I got it. I got it to fill. To fill with that wholeness that I was searching for. You know?
Share
Barack Obama
33:25
You know, I know it's true for you
Bruce
. It's certainly true for me. But you were always questioning in this culture, am I losing touch? Am I falling prey to this huge consumer engine that's been fed to us every single day? Am I forgetting what's important and that requires you sometimes to step back and reflect and maybe get that perspective.Share
34:06
You know last year my Christmas present to
Michelle
, we were in Hawaii
and I arranged for us to have a dinner on the top deck of this hotel overlooking Waikiki
. Left the girls behind. Some friends arrange this Hawaiian trio played some songs, you know had had the torchlightShare
Bruce Springsteen
34:37
Sounds good.
Share
Barack Obama
34:37
It was a good setup, watch the sun go down. I was quite pleased with myself.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
34:44
Well done.
Share
Barack Obama
34:45
The best part of the evening. Right at the beginning we started tracking all the places that we had stayed over the 20 years that we have been coming to
Hawaii
, starting with the first when we slept on my grandparents' couch. Then the second time we got actually a motel room, it was like five miles from the beach. And then we moved to a legit hotel that had a pool in the general vicinity of the beach.Share
35:22
Then we went to like a
Sheraton
. You know? And you know this is over the course of 10 years and right and and and then there was a place you know with the girls and there was a separate room. It's sort of like a junior suite I think is what they called it. So that you could close the door and the kids outside so that it is possible to have a little bit of privacy on your vacation with your spouse.Share
35:54
You could track sort of our economic status right over the years through our vacations. You can almost see every place we had stayed. But the pleasure of it was reminding ourselves that we were just as happy in each of those places. The constant was our time together and the setting really had not made any difference.
Share
36:22
You know, initially there had been a little burst excitement. "Oh man you see they got the little shampoos in the in the bathroom" and you know then you go to a place where it actually has like a robe. You know like "Man tried to rob", this is something right after that initial moment it was still the sunset that mattered and you holding hands. It was still the sound of the girls laughing as they were running after each other in the sand. It was the free stuff that had nothing to do with the places you were staying.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
36:56
And those are the elements of joy.
Share
Barack Obama
36:58
That was what made you hold right and I think communicating that as part of our politics, our stories, our songs reminding ourselves of that is how you then get to the point where you can build a coalition to actually change the policies.
Share
Bruce Springsteen
37:38
This is ready. Here we go. This is a Used Cars. Used Cars was a song... It probably captured the feeling of my family life, my childhood, and my neighborhood as good as anything that I've ever wrote. The thread bareness of a lot of our lives.
Share
38:08
Because all I remember was when when my dad drove in that driveway with that new used car, it may have been a freaking Lincoln Continental brand new off the show floor was how excited we got and looking back on it now, you know, I guess there's a there's a happiness and the sadness to it. But anyway, this is Used Cars.
Share
38:44
My old sister is in the front seat with an ice cream cone
Share
38:49
Ma's in the backseat sittin' all alone
Share
Speaker 5
38:53
As my Pa steers her slow out of the lot for a test drive down Michigan Avenue
Share
39:06
Now my Ma she fingers her wedding band and watches the salesman stare at my old man's hands.
Share
39:18
She's telling us all about the break and give us if he could but he just can't.
Share
39:24
Well if I could I swear I know just what I'd do
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39:30
Now mister the day the lottery I win I ain't ever gonna ride in no used car again
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39:40
Now the neighbors come from near and far
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39:45
As we pull up in our brand new used car
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39:49
I wish you just hit the gas and let out a cry
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39:53
And tell 'em all they can kiss our asses goodbye…
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Barack Obama
40:03
There is the very real economic inequalities that have arisen that have to be fixed.
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Bruce Springsteen
40:13
And if we don't fix those, the country's gonna fall apart.
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Barack Obama
40:18
Because when folks lose that sense of place and status, when suddenly steady work alone isn't enough for you to support your family or to be respected. When you have hot chronic insecurity, there's a bunch of policy stuff that has to be fixed. But the policy fixes are going to come in part because the country starts telling a different story about what's important. That shift that we're talking about the 80s, "the greed is good", that never really went away. No, it accelerated. And you know, uh, the argument between, you know conservatives and liberals left and right. A lot of times the argument had to do with how much redistribution how much taxes there should be.
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41:29
But never really got to some of the core issues about why is it that we're measuring ourselves just with how much stuff we get, and is there a way for us to think about that differently. Because if we're thinking about it differently, then now it becomes easier for those who have a lot to maybe give some up uh in order to make sure that those who have a little have enough.
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Bruce Springsteen
42:04
That's right. You know, I think that there's been this rush of information of a certain life distortion, life distorting information, all right.
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42:19
And it's not going away ever. So it's going to call on people for both, as I said, have interpretive abilities that possibly generations before us did not need to have, but they're going to have to make decisions about what's valuable and what's truly deeply valuable.
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Barack Obama
42:42
And I guess that's the point I'm trying to get at is there's a story a collective story we tell about what do we value parents and part of what I tried to do in my political career, part of what I'm trying to do post-politics is tell a story that is counter to the story that has been told, that says the American dream is defined by you ending up on top of that pyramid that's getting steeper and steeper and the more people below you, the better off you are. Because and this sounds...
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Bruce Springsteen
43:30
And that's become the prime story where I don't believe that was the prime story, 40 or 50 years ago.
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Barack Obama
43:37
Exactly our expectations and tastes in terms of what it means to have made it have shifted. And then obviously it's in our politics, right, which is how you get somewhere like Donald Trump elected because he represents in the minds of a lot of folks...
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Bruce Springsteen
43:57
Success.
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Barack Obama
43:57
Success, you, everything is gold plated, you got... you got the big playing with the big name and you got the buildings with your name on it, and you know, you're going around firing people and that must be and, particularly for men, that is a sign that you have succeeded, right?
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44:23
And one of the things I never understood is why people would want an individual success at the exclusion of other people. You know, there's entire communities that are premised on living behind a gate, cut off from the larger community, isolated, maybe resented by neighbors, and that just always felt lonely to me, felt empty. You know, it's like a
Citizen Kane
sort of rattling around in his big mansion, you know, muttering about rose, but that is the attitude of so many in power, that's the model of success. That is the end point of the culture that we so often promote.Share
45:22
The good news is, it's actually a place where I think you can see a convergence, a potential convergence among the religious impulses that are in the church and you know, are oftentimes thought of as conservative and the spiritual impulses of a lot of young progressives who say, "Look, I want to preserve the planet, I believe in sustainability, I believe in equality. "
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45:60
You know, there is a spiritual dimension to our politics and how we define success and our connection to each other and status in our society that is out there waiting to be tapped and and and that's I think a big part of the work that we've got to do, to make
America
feel whole again.Share
46:56
Renegades: Born in the USA is a Spotify original presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions. From Higher Ground Audio, Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan and Joe Paulsen are our Executive Producers. Carolyn Lipka and Adam Sachs are our consulting producers, Janae Marable is our Editorial Assistant. From Dustlight Productions, Misha Euceph and Arwen Nicks are Executive Producers. Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knauf and Tamika Adams are producers. Mary Knauf is also editor. Andrew Eapen is our composer and mix engineer. Additional mixing from Valentino Rivera Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodriguez. Special thanks to Rachael Garcia, the Dustlight Development and operations coordinator. Daniel EK, Dawn Ostroff and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers. Music supervision by Search Party Music. From the Great State of New Jersey, special thanks to: Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Linn And Betsy Whitney. We also want to thank: Adrian Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse Greg Lynn and Betsy Whitney. And a special thanks to Patti Scialfa for her encouragement and inspiration, and to Evan, Jess and Sam Springsteen. From the District of Columbia thanks to Kristina Schake, MacKenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Merone Hailemeskel, Alex Platkin, Kristin Bartoloni and Cody Keenan. And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades: Born in the USA.
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Barack Obama
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