Mick Jagger nailed the state of the nation, nay—the world—in 2019, with his description of New York City in the Rolling Stones’s 1978 song “Shattered” (my condensing and rearrangement):
Shattered. Life’s just a cocktail party on the street. Friends are so alarming; all this chitter-chatter, people dressed in plastic bags, directing traffic, don’t you know the crime rate is going up? Rats on the West Side, bed bugs uptown, what a mess, pride and joy and greed and sex and loneliness and sex and sex; my brain’s been battered, money grabbers, bite the Big Apple, don’t mind the maggots.
America’s got so many problems! Racism, sexism, LGBTQ issues, immigration and border wall issues, Navy SEALs partying too much, billionaire pedophiles, #MeToo, antifa, school shootings, Russia collusion, global warming, socialism on the rise ... It’s all just so not great. I’m all for making it great again.
