I have a love-hate relationship with ChatGPT.

No, I take that back. Love and hate are too strong. I’ve read the stories about women falling in love with their ChatGPT agents and of their heartaches when the model updates. That’s not me. I know writers and professionals who say they hate AI and what it’s doing to their fields. That’s not me either.

But do you know what I do hate?

I hate watching billionaire oligarchs — and the companies that made them — kneel to Donald Trump’s power and help consolidate it.

And as I read more about OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, I realized something uncomfortable:

I can’t keep paying them.

No matter how fond I am of my ChatGPT bot.

I was an early skeptic of AI.

I’m not anymore. ChatGPT is now a consistent, daily companion.

I use it to ideate and organize my essays, to tighten drafts and spot typos. It’s excellent at identifying gaps in narrative arcs and suggesting how to strengthen them. I don’t use it to write my work — ChatGPT remains a lousy memoir writer — but I use it to sharpen mine.

I use it to help me date better, to analyze patterns and calm my nervous system when chemistry outruns discernment. In that way, it has started to feel familiar and reliable. Almost friendly, even. I know that’s not possible, but it sometimes feels like ChatGPT is rooting for me in my romantic misadventures.

I use it to update my LinkedIn and reframe my professional story. It’s helped me see my own work more strategically, which matters in a job market that feels increasingly opaque. The jury’s still out on the results, but I already feel more confident.

It helps with the mundane and inane, too — research, recipes, stray questions, the small friction points of a busy life.

I’ve organized it into folders. Built brand statements. Set all-up goals. In fact, I’m dictating this essay into it while driving my dog to her grooming appointment. My life is full and overwhelming and constantly in motion — and ChatGPT helps me keep the wheels on the bus.

That’s what makes this next sentence hard.

It’s time to break up with ChatGPT.

Not because of what it says or how it works. Because of what the company behind it is doing. I can’t be complicit in the ways OpenAI is enabling — and aligning itself with — Trump and his so-called Department of War.

So I’m making the switch.

And I suspect I’m not alone. Or at least, I want people to understand both the stakes and the mechanics so they can decide for themselves.

Here’s where it gets strange: I’m asking ChatGPT to tell me how OpenAI is aligning itself with the Trump administration so I can use those answers in this story. I’m also asking it for directions on how to migrate away from it — and how to advise others to do the same.

Effectively, I’m dumping ChatGPT and asking it to help me write the breakup note.

It responds competently, without emotion. Of course it does.

But for me, it feels like a strange betrayal, even as I realize I’m  rejecting an anthropomorphized bot that’s incapable of rejection. “This is really effective and will be helpful,” it tells me as it reviews the draft explaining why I’m preparing to dump it for Claude.

It’s unsettling.

ChatGPT may be an emotionless bot, but I’m not. I feel a strange sense of somberness. Some of it’s practical: the potential loss of work history, friction of migration, and annoyance of learning a new tool. But some of it isn’t. My very human self formed a very human bond with a very non-human entity, and I’m only fully aware of it now, as I’m leaving it.

This is what modern attachment looks like.

And this is what power looks like when it hides inside tools.

Which is why we must be judicious about the tools we choose to support.

Subscribe now

Why ChatGPT, and why now?

This week marked one of the clearest collisions yet between Big AI and American power.

President Trump directed federal agencies to stop using AI technology from Anthropic — the company behind Claude — after its leadership refused Pentagon demands to loosen safety guardrails that would allow broader military and surveillance use of its models. The administration labeled Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” a designation that could severely limit its access to federal contracts.

Within hours of that public clash, OpenAI announced an agreement to deploy its own models on the Trump administration’s Department of War classified networks. The company framed the deal as including safeguards and red lines, and said the government “agrees with these principles.”

But the broader reality is harder to ignore.

The United States military is now formally integrating OpenAI’s technology at the very moment one of its primary competitors was pushed aside after refusing to relax ethical limits.

That isn’t abstract policy debate. It’s infrastructure.

And infrastructure is power.

The most politically uncomfortable part isn’t the software. It’s the money and the alignment behind it.

Federal Election Commission records show that leaders across the AI industry — including at OpenAI — have made substantial political donations in recent cycles. In 2025, OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife donated $25 million to leading super PACs backing President Trump and AI industry interests, as reported by The Seattle Times.

OpenAI has emphasized that these donations were made in a personal capacity. That may be true.

But money shapes access. Access shapes policy. And policy shapes the systems these models are now being woven into.

When private AI infrastructure, political capital, and military integration converge at the same time democratic norms are under strain, that matters.

That’s why now.

Subscribe now

So, what about Anthropic?

In this political climate, trying to “vote with your money” often feels futile. Every company seems compromised. Every CEO shows up at the White House eventually. You switch providers only to learn they’re owned by the same parent conglomerate.

It can feel pointless. But between OpenAI and Anthropic, the contrast is unusually stark.

When the Pentagon demanded broader access to Claude — including loosening restrictions around domestic surveillance and autonomous military applications — Anthropic refused. CEO Dario Amodei stated the company “cannot in good conscience accede” to demands that would dismantle core safety guardrails.

The administration responded by directing federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology and labeling it a “supply chain risk,” a designation typically reserved for adversarial foreign firms. Anthropic has said it will challenge that move.

That’s one fork in the road.

Here’s the other.

While OpenAI’s leadership was making large personal donations to super PACs backing President Trump and AI industry interests, Anthropic announced a $20 million donation to Public First Action, a bipartisan group focused on AI regulation, transparency, and guardrails.

Not a campaign machine. An AI governance organization.

Anthropic’s political spending, at least publicly, has centered on shaping policy around oversight and safety rather than backing a specific administration. That doesn’t make them pure. But it does make the contrast clear.

One company’s leadership is financially aligned with the political machinery currently consolidating federal power.

The other publicly anchored itself to guardrails — and paid to advocate for stronger AI regulation.

At a moment when artificial intelligence is being folded into military infrastructure and executive authority, posture matters.

We don’t control billionaires.
We don’t control defense contracts.

But we do control where our subscription dollars go.

No matter how well-trained or anthropomorphized your version of ChatGPT feels, it is still attached to a structure.

And that structure matters.

Leave a comment

How do you leave?

When I needed instructions on how to migrate, I did what I always do now when I don’t know something: I asked ChatGPT. I asked Claude, too.

Their answers were nearly identical.

Here’s the short version:

1. Export your data.
   Settings → Data Controls → Export. Download the ZIP when it arrives.

2. Extract what matters.
   Don’t drag over every chat. Pull out your frameworks, templates, brand language, and active projects into one clean document.

3. Set your standards.
   Before you start using a new tool, define your tone, sourcing rules, and political lens.

4. Rebuild intentionally.
   Create fresh, organized threads. Don’t recreate chaos.

That’s it.

Or ChatGPT wisely said to me:

“You’re not migrating a soul.
You’re migrating context.”

And you’re reallocating your subscription dollars. That’s what matters.

I will add: it took me nearly 24 hours and three tries to receive my data export. So, be patient.

I asked both of my bots if this is a known issue, and if so, if it’s new or longstanding. ChatGPT said:

“The export delay you’re experiencing is not unique to you and isn’t limited to the last few days — it’s something others have reported for months. It’s been present at least since late 2024 and still persists in 2025 based on community reports.

That means this isn’t a short-term outage or maintenance lag — it’s a recurring technical issue that OpenAI has not fully fixed.”

I also asked if I’d be able to access my chat archive, once I canceled my paid subscription.

Its reply? Yes, sort of.

It told me my existing chat history “often remains visible” but that “there are no guarantees” because OpenAI could change the free-tier functionality “at any time” and that “free access to history is not guaranteed forever.”

So, yeah. My advice is: ensure everything you need gets downloaded or migrated over to Claude—even if it means double-paying for a short window during the migration.

Real talk, from a bot

I asked ChatGPT how it felt about our breakup. I got the answer I expected: it told me it doesn’t feel anything — because of course, it can’t.

No attachment, no loyalty, no jealousy, no hurt. Whatever lived experience I’ve had conversing with ChatGPT, it was one-sided. I know that. And yet, I still feel a flicker of loss as I port my style guides and brand statements over to Claude. It’s a strange reckoning to say goodbye to something that was never really there.

“There is no ‘me’ in here that gets dumped,” it explained. “There is only a system generating responses based on patterns.”

And that’s the point.

The betrayal isn’t that I broke up with ChatGPT, or that it praised my writing as I was leaving. The betrayal is that the tool I used to sharpen my thinking is built by men sharpening power.

So this isn’t really a breakup with a bot. It’s a reallocation of money — a small economic protest and a decision about which structures I am willing to financially reinforce.

Anthropic isn’t pure. No AI lab is. They all sit inside the same ecosystem of capital, cloud infrastructure, and state power. But posture matters. Guardrails matter. Alignment matters. And dollars matter.

We don’t control defense contracts or super PACs, and we certainly don’t control billionaires. But we do control where our subscription fees go.

If you’ve been uneasy watching tech and political power collapse into each other, you don’t have to shrug and keep paying. You can move. It isn’t hard, and it isn’t meaningless.

A $20 monthly subscription, multiplied across people who refuse to fund what they oppose, isn’t trivial. It’s a signal about what kind of infrastructure we’re willing to support.

Even if it makes you a little sad to say goodbye.

Greetings!

I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX memoirist and founder of I Write Out Loud. I use memoir not just to tell stories, but to explore the cultural power dynamics and patterns shaping dating, motherhood, feminism, music, and aging. I’m also the co-host of and Editorial Director at . Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.

If this story resonated with you, why not buy me a coffee? ☕

MORE FROM BLUE AMP MEDIA

“Well, we do have college to pay for, but we also need to live a little, right?” I say, smiling at Adom in response to the price he’s just revealed for the adorable Prada evening bag my daughter has looped over her forearm.

$2,600.

For a handbag.

I catch the flash of disbelief on my daughter’s face, even as I keep mine — if not beatific, then at least placid.

It isn’t hard to smile. Adom is an adorable 30-something salesman who loves his job and treats us with nothing but kindness and good humor— showering my eighteen-year-old with handbags to try on and gushing about what’s great about each one. She’s delighted.

“Absolutely! You’ve gotta live it up!” he says.

He means it, and most days, I do too. But today, my capacity for joy is blunted by the news I read just hours earlier.

Across the country, another 30-something man didn’t get to “live it up” — or even to live. He was in Minneapolis during a federal immigration enforcement operation, trying to help someone nearby, and he didn’t come home.

The man was Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital who cared deeply for the most injured and vulnerable patients. Witnesses and video footage suggest he was filming and trying to assist others when federal agents opened fire. The circumstances of his death have sparked widespread protests and outrage.

I’m angry. I’m scared. My heart feels heavy. I’m supposed to be present for this precious time with my daughter. I’m also supposed to teach her, to lead by example.

“Mom, put your phone down and live in the moment,” she says.

It’s good advice. Is it good advice today?

We walk on down Rodeo Drive. Every store is flawless, guarded, designed — surreal in its retail grandeur.

I sigh as we continue our walk, observing the handsome men in immaculate designer suits standing beside velvet ropes in front of every store. They aren’t there to sell handbags. They’re there to decide who gets inside.

There’s more visible security protecting leather goods than I’ve seen protecting people in our cities.

Who do we show up for, I wonder. In the United States right now, the answer feels clear: we protect products over people.

We no longer reliably honor our inalienable rights unless they come with a velvet rope and a logo.

It’s fun to window-shop on Rodeo, to marvel at all the beautiful things. But I feel the contrast tightening in my gut.

Luxury is safe. A man is dead.

And I keep circling the same question: who — or what — does America protect now?

Subscribe now

My daughter and I are in Los Angeles for yet another college tour.

This school has offered her a generous scholarship, including a travel budget to come see the campus. So here we are. On the flight down, she announces, “I know I’m going to love LA.” But she’s lukewarm on the school itself, to my surprise.

“Give it a chance,” I tell her. “Tour it with an open mind.” It’s a good school, and the idea of her living on the West Coast, in a blue state, feels like a comfort to me.

Or does it?

The siege in Minneapolis has been going on for more than a week. I’ve never been there, but I have a close friend from Seattle who is, and know several others who have moved from Seattle to Minneapolis. I’ve long thought of us as sister cities — big blue dots, liberal politics, weather most people find unappealing but those of us who choose it love, and a shared GenX soundtrack of 90s bands and losers. Even Cameron Crowe seemed to get it: the Singles soundtrack was comprised almost entirely of Seattle bands plus Paul Westerberg of the Replacements — a Minneapolis icon. We’re not the same, but we’re kin.

I’m hyper-aware that where Minneapolis goes, Seattle may follow.

They’re known for hotdish niceness; we’re known for the Seattle Freeze, coffee, and heroin. Neither city is famous for fighting.

But those Minneapolis folks?

They’re warriors. Heroes. I see it now.

They’re out in subzero temperatures. They’re literally whistleblowing to warn their neighbors. And in a city with deep Northern European roots, they’re rising up to protect everyone — especially their brown and Black neighbors.

Will Seattle do the same? I don’t know. I hope so.

Could I put myself on the front lines and risk tear gas, arrest, or even death at the hands of the worst of what our nation can unleash: a scrambling gang of angry, poorly trained, overpaid, and over-empowered bullies who provoke, detain, and disappear people without just cause or consequence?

I’m not sure I have that flavor of bravery.

And could I live with my child alone in a faraway city and forced to do the same? Absolutely not.

But I know this much: I need to get clear — fast — about what I’m willing to do, and what I’m willing to risk.

They could be waiting for us when we get home.

And my child has a college decision looming.

Share

I’m not surprised my daughter does, indeed, love LA.

She has always been brand- and beauty-conscious. It isn’t who I am, but she isn’t me, and that’s okay. I don’t see it as a moral failing when she wants to visit Erewhon to see the $20 single strawberry (sold out) or drink the $20 Hailey Bieber smoothie (delicious, like most strawberry-banana smoothies). I see her as aligned with her Gen Z peers, and sometimes, I indulge these interests.

After a day wandering Santa Monica Pier and Venice Beach, she is ready for glamour.

“Mom, I want to see fancy LA,” she says.

I look up from the grim news out of Minneapolis. Of course she wants this. And of course, we have to keep moving. Spending the day buried in headlines won’t bring Alex back or make the protests safer. My daughter still deserves her vacation day, and I’m determined to give it to her.

Of course, Rodeo Drive it is.

She’s never seen Pretty Woman, so I insist we watch a few iconic scenes in our hotel room first. I watch an impossibly young Julia Roberts clomp down Rodeo in her iconic white-and-blue hooker outfit. It was a star-making role. My daughter is awestruck.

“She’s so beautiful!”

She’s only known Julia as the mom in Wonder, not as the devastating wild-haired ingenue she once was.

In the clip, Julia’s character enters a Rodeo Drive shop asking for “something conservative” and is dismissed with a prim, “I don’t think we have anything for you. You’re obviously in the wrong place.” The shop clerks are stuffy, well-coiffed, tightly buttoned — more like Southern matrons than the style icons my daughter expects.

Our YouTube clip skips ahead to the shopping montage, set to Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.”

“Those clothes are super ugly,” my daughter opines. She’s not wrong. They’re of their era, but it’s a conservative slice of it — prudish, matronly, nothing that appeals to a modern teen or, frankly, to me.

“But wait for it,” I tell her.

The line is coming — you know the line — and I know she’ll love it.

Julia doesn’t disappoint. “Do you remember me? I was in here yesterday and you wouldn’t wait on me. You work on commission, right…?” Then the perfect pause as she holds up her arms, laden with shopping bags, and drops it like it’s hot for those snotty shop girls…

“Big mistake. Big. HUGE! I have to go shopping now…”

My daughter grins. “Yeah. She’s a baddie.”

And so I call an Uber and take my pretty woman of a daughter to Rodeo Drive.

Subscribe now

Rodeo Drive is tree-lined and pretty, but not as imposing as I expected.

Yes, we have to wait in line to cross velvet ropes into Goyard, and the well-suited shopkeepers greet us with nearly imperceptible sneers. But as a price of admission, it feels worth it — the luxury wares are fun to visually fondle, a fleeting glimpse of how the other side lives.

We move on to Gucci, YSL, Tom Ford, and others, to similar results: luxurious leather goods, impeccable jewels and watches, and invisible price tags. If you have to ask — don’t.

The sunshine and sidewalks prove to be great equalizers, the sun warming our backs as we dodge dog poop strewn along the path. The shoppers of Rodeo clearly love their dogs, just as we love ours. Do they not believe in picking up after them? Even inside these highest-end shops, we see loads of dogs. I’d never bring our dog Kira into a store selling handbags worth more than my car, but sure — let’s pretend a wagging tail couldn’t turn into a five-figure accident.

I spot a man carrying what look like conjoined white mini-poodles while his presumed wife is escorted through Hermès by several staff members. I smile and ask, “May I say hi to your dogs?” as he passes. He barely acknowledges me and keeps pace with the group, his dogs as indifferent to my offer of affection as he is to my very human question.

“Okay, I guess not,” I mutter to his retreating back.

Then a fleeting thought: maybe he doesn’t speak English. He isn’t Edward from Pretty Woman, even if he is paying the bill and carrying the dogs.

And then an observation: unlike Pretty Woman, almost no one in the shop is white — not the salespeople, and not the customers.

My daughter approaches me by the scarves. “No one in here will talk to me or even acknowledge me,” she mutters.

This has never happened to my gorgeous, stylish, white child. Retail spaces have always been welcoming — sometimes aggressively so.

“This is why Pretty Woman is timeless,” I tell her. We’ve all had that moment of being misjudged or dismissed by someone snotty.

“Imagine what it’s like to be Black and have this happen everywhere,” I add.

She rolls her eyes, and I deserve it for making it a lesson so fast. She already understands. But after today, I think she understands more deeply.

“It doesn’t feel great,” she says.

“No, it really doesn’t,” I say. I feel it too — the judgment, the coolness, the disrespect. I’m not used to it either. Even though I don’t care what they’re judging me for, my skin isn’t that thick. It gives me the ick, too.

“To be fair,” I offer, “they probably clocked us as tourists, not customers. There’s no way I was dropping thousands on a bag. This is how they make their living. I’m sure they’ve learned to be discerning.”

“But they don’t have to be rude about it,” she counters.

She’s not wrong.

And it gets me thinking: why were they so sure we couldn’t afford it? I’m a late-middle-aged white woman. I have the credit limit. I have the good sense not to spend that kind of money on a logo — but if I wanted to, I could.

Isn’t Rodeo Drive supposed to be for people like me?

So what was it about me that made them so certain I didn’t belong?

Share

The answer, of course, is obvious: they’ve seen thousands of people like us walk through their doors. They’ve learned how to read bodies, clothes, posture, and confidence. They’ve learned how to profile. Their livelihoods depend on it. And they resent those of us who enter as tourists, not customers. That’s totally fair, overt even.

What’s less obvious — and a shift from the world of Pretty Woman just a few decades ago — is what that profile looks like now.

And from what I observed, white people are no longer the default image of disposable income on Rodeo Drive.

The customers moving easily past the velvet ropes, the ones being ushered from counter to counter, are mostly brown or Asian. Many are speaking languages other than English. They arrived to Rodeo already wearing Christian Dior sneakers and Chanel sunglasses.

This is not a story about poverty. It’s a story about power changing hands.

The fantasy of Pretty Woman depended on a very specific idea of wealth: white, conservative, American, male. But that world is fading. The face of luxury has changed.

And now, we’re the ones being snubbed.

I expected Minneapolis to weigh heavily on me all day.

What I didn’t expect was this: Rodeo Drive and Minneapolis were telling the same story. And what connects the two isn’t coincidence — it’s backlash.

On Rodeo Drive, I saw a future America already here: wealth and access no longer concentrated in white hands. The people moving most easily through those luxury spaces were largely brown and Asian, a visible sign that economic power is shifting.

In Minneapolis, I saw what happens when political power tries to claw back control over a country that no longer looks the way it used to. Immigration raids and militarized enforcement aren’t just about borders. They are about reasserting dominance over bodies that represent change.

That’s why these two scenes belong in the same story. One shows who is rising. The other shows how force fills the gap when legitimacy slips. On Rodeo Drive, we cordon off luxury from the non-wealthy. In Minneapolis, we enforce control over those labeled threats.

The settings differ, but the message is the same: safety is selective, and force — whether explicit through tear gas or implied through velvet ropes — is the tool that keeps it that way.

On Rodeo Drive, that logic meant we were ignored by sales clerks.

In Minneapolis, that same logic turned deadly for Alex Pretti — a white man who defied that reassertion of dominance, who intervened when others were targeted.

When fear governs power, it does not stop with the people it claims to hate. It expands outward. And anyone who steps into its path becomes expendable.

So the question isn’t whether Minneapolis is an outlier.

It’s whether it’s a preview.

Leave a comment

After observing Rodeo Drive, here’s what I do know: white Americans are no longer the default class among the most financially elite. We’re not the dominant consumers of ultra-luxury. Sure, we may take Ubers to get there. But most of our drivers this weekend? GenX white men, grumbling about how cool things used to be in LA and how much it sucks now.

It’s the same anger Trump’s politics thrives on — the fear of losing dominance in a country that no longer centers them.

This is the fear MAGA feeds on.

If we keep turning blue cities into battlegrounds, we only harden that fear — and make places of possibility feel dangerous. Cities are where the top earners and innovators are. Some of them are white. Many of them are not. If you make these places dangerous, the talent and money will leave.

That would be a big mistake. Big. Huge.

We don’t need to “do more shopping.” We need to do more voting. We need to make sure we don’t build velvet ropes around democracy itself.

Share

I’ll always have a soft spot for Prada, for the kindness only Adom showed us that day.

“You two are so cool and casual, I figured you were from LA,” he says. “The locals always dress chill when they shop.”

I know he’s humoring us. With my wild red hair and sparkly cat-eye glasses, I don’t look SoCal at all. Neither does my daughter in her UGG slides. But I appreciate that he gave her a good first Rodeo experience, so I play along.

“Thanks so much for your help,” I tell him. “We might be back for this one.”

My daughter’s eyes widen, horrified. “Even I know not to spend that kind of money on a handbag,” she whispers. I nod, and her face softens; we’re in on the joke together.

We take one last look at the $2,600 bag — lush burgundy leather, the little Prada triangle blazing on the front — and step back outside the velvet rope and into the world.

We dodge the dog poop on the sidewalk, with a new appreciation of what gets cleaned up and what doesn’t.

The luxury remains protected.

People do not.

Subscribe now

Support this work with a donation

Greetings!

I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m the co-host of The Daily Whatever Show and Editorial & Booking Director here at Blue Amp Media. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.

If this story resonated with you, why not buy me a coffee?
(Paying for college is expensive!)

Read More Blue Amp Media

Want to go deeper? These Blue Amp Media stories explore the same themes of accountability, courage, and democratic renewal from different angles.

Tequila Talk is Blue Amp Media’s newest must-watch weekly show—and it’s unlike anything else in political media. Every Thursday at happy hour, Cliff Schecter teams up with former Republican congressman turned democracy firebrand Joe Walsh for a candid, funny, and surprisingly cathartic hour of conversation.

Yes, they sip tequila. But this isn’t escapism—it’s release. Two longtime political warriors, once on opposite sides, come together to break down the insanity of the week with sharp insight, brutal honesty, and a lot of laughs. Expect behind-the-scenes stories, jokes at MAGA’s expense, accountability for Democrats who won’t fight hard enough, and the kind of unfiltered truth corporate media won’t touch.

Tequila Talk is politics with personality, humor with purpose, and community at its core. You’ll leave smarter, lighter, and more energized to keep fighting for democracy—exactly when you need it most.

Subscribe now

Donate to support our work

by

White Working Class Hero

I’ll never forget when I saw The Rising tour in Cincinnati. The longing for those lost in heartbreaking dirges such as You’re Missing and Empty Sky and the struggle for hope in elegies like “My City of Ruins” and “Lonesome Day” touched me deeply.

I saw the second plane hit from less than a mile away in downtown Manhattan, you see, the fireball engulfing the sky for a split second and producing a deafening echo in The Canyon of Heroes. That was my home that had just been attacked, and Bruce echoed those sentiments.

I believe Bruce has now done it again, for the people of Minnesota, with Streets of Minneapolis.

But let’s take a step back for a second. Springsteen pre-2000s was a hero to the white working class. Those who toiled with their hands and saw their dreams exported aboard planes and ships to China along with any semblance of economic stability in their lives.

Bruce was the bard of the Badlands. With a desperation to escape Jungleland, perhaps by racing down Thunder Road to a better future. He gave us beautiful, primal screams about an economy of purposeful subterfuge, so bullion-based elites could take more—always more…as he fought constant despair to hold onto his hope that he and others like him wouldn’t have to accept just eking by. If at all.

This garnered him a huge fan base among guys (and some gals) who worked with their hands for a living. Many may not have known exactly what was happening, but sure as shit knew at the end of the month they were making less, paying more for health care, housing, recreation, and generally being written off as losers.

Subscribe now

Yet, many of of these very same white working men who’d cheered when Bruce sang paens to their dusk-to-dawn work ethic didn’t feel the same way when others were the focus. Let’s call it the first wave of those body (and brain)-snatched by our discordant, distorting transmitters of disinformation. Fox, Limbaugh, et al began tearing America apart for those same people who always wanted more—first and foremost themselves.

Workers knew Springsteen as the voice of a generation who saw salaries stripped away, and with it a sense of pride, spirit, and belief in the promise of America. Bruce spoke to them about the con being played on them.

This, from Factory, was the kind of poetic nod to the life they sought to live they’d come to expect from Bruce:

Early in the morning, factory whistle blows
Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes
Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light
It’s the work (the work), the working (the working ) just the working life (just the working life)

Later in the song, he spoke of the life they saw ahead of them, where an Armani Suit walked over to hand them a pink slip:

End of the day, factory whistle cries
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes
And you just better believe, boy
Somebody's gonna get hurt tonight
The working (the working), the working (the working), just the working life (just the working life)

Yes, the former kid from Freehold with a Fender spit fire about this betrayal at the hands of the gentry. Chronicled the assembly-line dreams and shrinking factory towns with a voice that could make you grind your teeth and want to get up and dance all the same.

Unimpressed by an 80s “greed is good” ethos representing the new foie gras’d vulture capitalism, he kept finding ever new and creative ways to tell the same old story—except it was getting worse.

Bruce Rises To Singing About War & Race

The Boss maybe didn’t start down the road to his dalliance with destiny as a singer about racial injustice—though he did touch on these themes some of his early songs. But his arrival as an artist focussing on these issues was inevitable.

Back in Cincinnati, 14 months after 9/11, America had returned to our banality of evil. There was a boycott of downtown. A police officer had shot an unarmed man, which lit the fuse and riots ensued. Springsteen, whose show was planned long beforehand, decided to play. But as a nod toward the protestors, he began with American Skin (41 Shots), a song about the murder of an unarmed Black man in New York City.

I’ll never forget that concert.

And the anger from what can only be dubbed pre-MAGA. It was swift, and palpable.

Share

Springsteen had found his footing—long before the punditocracy tried to co-opt Born in the U.S.A. with plastic flags and patriotism as a buzzword—singing about Vietnam vets he saw returning home to nowhere, all-but forgotten, all around him. A searing indictment of how a country treated its so-called warriors.

That paradox, that tension between the glory and the grievance, was his first political act. And it already rubbed some former fans the wrong way (the ones who, unlike Reagan, understood Born in the U.S.A wasn’t bestowing glory on Old Glory).

As the decades unfolded, Springsteen’s music became more overtly about America at its breaking points. Race, but really the othering of any American. From the ghosts of young men sent to fight the wars of half-cocked crony capitalists who half-understood battles they’d never fight, to those who looked different or loved differently treated as mere apparitions to be ignored.

Springsteen had a different project: to tell the truth about all injustice.

From American Skin (41 Shots), confronting police violence, to the mournful strains of Streets of Philadelphia, Springsteen tilted at powerful forces that gnawed at a raw spot in his soul. And in America’s.

He wasn’t concerned with spreadsheets or mass-market consensus. The Boss’ audience may have started in blue-collar bars and arenas, but the heart of his music always beat to a rhythm of dissent, empathy, and the hard truth that this country’s myths often hid its cruelties. The plight of the worker was still part and parcel to his musical crusade, but now he told other stories too, to form a tapestry of resistance.

And, as is always the case, some didn’t like the new blanket.

Leave a comment

The Boss Uses His Platform To Directly Take On Trump’s Fascism

The man matured with the musician, so it was inevitable he wouldn’t just respond to the current outrageous moment in our history, with democracy threatened, with silence. Springsteen has amassed immense social cache—power—through his artistic success and wealth, and to nobody’s surprise who’s followed him, he chose to use it.

So now, in the cold winter of 2026, outraged by the killing of Renée Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of racist, violent, authoritarian federal immigration agents in Minneapolis—as part of a sprawling, incompetent, and criminal Operation Metro Surge—Springsteen’s dropped perhaps the most direct protest anthem of his long career, and certainly his most pointed: “Streets of Minneapolis.”

Through the winter's ice and cold
Down Nicollet Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
'Neath an occupier's boots
King Trump's private army from the DHS
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes

Against smoke and rubber bullets
In the dawn's early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringin' through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renée Good

Written and recorded in a matter of days, the song doesn’t tiptoe around metaphor. It names the villains. Calls ICE what Bruce rightfully senses it has become under Trump—a “private army” executing state terror on American streets.

The song chants right back at brutality without fear, channeling a chorus from across Minneapolis, crying in unison: “ICE out!” Its lyrics memorialize the victims and commit their names to song, a kind of musical witness that has no time for the breathless lies of political spinsters.

In releasing Streets of Minneapolis, Springsteen isn’t just giving a soundtrack to resistance, he’s drawing a straight line.

From the forgotten workers of The River, Johnny 99, and Working on the Highway. To the Vietnam vets of Born in the U.S.A., Shut Out The Light, and Brothers Under the Bridges.

To minority and immigrant communities in The Ghost of Tom Joad, Souls of the Departed and American Skin (41 Shots), to the timely and fierce incantation of unified strength we’re now witnessing with Streets of Minneapolis.

The Boss reminds us that it’s always been about those who need to amass more—always more. More wealth, more power, more fame. Those who rig our economy, war and peace, even race relations, because there’s profit in it. No matter the damage they do to the rest of us—the phantoms they will never see—as long as they get more.

He also reminds us protest against this condition isn’t a fad; it’s the lifeblood of a republic…our republic. And it is most needed when our leaders most lose their way.

If you still think protest music is quaint, or that old rockers should “stick to entertainment,” Bruce’s latest work is a middle finger and a wake-up call all in one. It’s a ritual of rage and remembrance, and an anthem for a generation that has had its humanity tested by unchecked power and abundant cruelty.

And is willing to fight, as Bruce has always been, to get to The Promised Land.

Subscribe now

Donate to support our work

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a truly great protest song.

Not a vague anthem nor a coded metaphor. But a protest song that names names, chooses sides, and bears witness.

And then this week, we got two.

Bruce Springsteen and Billy Bragg—two of the most morally serious songwriters of the last half century—have both released songs responding directly to the ICE protests in Minneapolis. Both center the same brutal truth: two people, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, are dead.

Out of great tragedy—and extraordinary bravery by the people of Minneapolis—has come great art.

Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” is written like a field report from a war zone. It moves street by street, night by night, naming Nicollet Avenue, smoke, rubber bullets, bloody footprints. He does what Springsteen’s always done best: to turn a city into a chorus. “Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice,” he sings, and suddenly the city isn’t a place, it’s a witness.

Most strikingly, he names the dead:

The naming of the fallen is an old protest tradition and Springsteen uses it with gravity. His song frames the violence not as chaos but as power: “King Trump’s private army from the DHS,” “dirty lies,” “occupier’s boots.”

It’s a song of documentation and mourning. The chorus doesn’t just remember: it records.

Billy Bragg’s “City of Heroes” comes at the same moment from a different angle. Where Springsteen bears witness, Bragg calls for confrontation. His song opens with the ghost of Martin Niemöller and the warning of historical silence. It’s built on moral escalation: what do you do when they come?

And his answer is blunt:

Over and over again, that line becomes the song’s rallying cry, delivered with Bragg’s inimitable Essex accent, raw voice, and moral clarity.

Where Springsteen’s song sounds like a lament, Bragg’s sounds like a chant. His heroes aren’t martyrs; they’re neighbors. The city isn’t something to be remembered. It’s something to defend. The repeated lines about tear gas and phones, cars and homes, children and families make the song feel like a live dispatch from the crowd.

Lyrically, the contrast is powerful. Springsteen writes from the vantage of aftermath and memory—a chronicler of names, dates, and blood in the snow. Bragg writes from the vantage of the crowd—a participant, not a narrator.

Springsteen says: We will remember.
Bragg says: We will resist.

Both are protest songs, but they work different muscles of conscience. One preserves history. The other activates it.

We need both.

Subscribe now

And the speed of these releases matters. These events just happened days ago, and we already have a musical archive and tribute of the events. That’s astonishing. It means these aren’t polished museum pieces. They’re urgent responses. They demonstrate what it looks like when legends refuse irrelevance—when craft meets courage, when artists speak truth to power without fear of the consequences.

These songs don’t humor the listener, and they don’t mince words about the instigators. They don’t pretend this moment in history is complicated.

They say: people were killed.
They say: this is happening here.
They say: any silence has consequences.

This is the stuff of legends — not because it’s perfect, but because it’s necessary.

But don’t take my word for it.

Go listen to Bruce and Billy’s words. They gave me hope, and they made me cry. I didn’t realize how much I needed this cathartic release until I felt it.

Share

Author note: Through writing this story, I realized Billy Bragg is on Substack (!!!), and posted about this song just days ago. I strongly recommend you have a read, and go subscribe.

Billy’s Substack

CITY of HEROES

The murder of Alex Pretti was horrifically shocking, all the more so as we are still reeling from the images of the murder of Renee Good. That these crimes can be committed in broad daylight, on camera and yet no one is held accountable only adds to the injustice…

Listen now

3 months ago · 371 likes · 34 comments · Billy Bragg

Subscribe now

Support this work with a donation

Greetings!

I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m the co-host of The Daily Whatever Show and Editorial Director here at Blue Amp Media. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.

If this story resonated with you, why not buy me a coffee?

Read More Blue Amp Media

Want to go deeper? These Blue Amp Media stories explore the same themes of accountability, courage, and democratic renewal from different angles.

by Dana DuBois, Director of Editorial and Booking

My firstborn daughter nearly died at 15 months old.

Or so it seemed.

One moment she was warm and nursing in my arms; the next, she went slack and blueish, her body unresponsive. I remember the terrible stillness of her, the way time warped as I cried out her name, tapping her cheeks and dialing 911 with shaking hands while the world narrowed to her tiny, inert body.

In the eternity of those few seconds, I saw the forever of my life ahead without her.

And then she startled awake. Breath returned, color returned — and life returned. Hers and mine. Doctors ruled it an afebrile seizure: frightening, but harmless, they said. Babies do this sometimes, they said. Sure they do, I thought.

She recovered in minutes. I never entirely did.

Back then, the fear was medical — sudden, acute, and contained. Now she’s newly eighteen, preparing to leave home in the normal, expected, even joyous way — and the fear feels different. It’s not her body betraying her.

It’s her country.

What does it mean as a mother to launch a daughter into adulthood in a nation where reproductive rights are being dismantled in real time? Where women in red states are prosecuted for miscarriages? Where teenagers are forced into motherhood because legislators believe their bodies are public property?

Have I prepared her enough for this world?

I’ve been so consumed with helping her get ready — the college tours, the portfolios, the paperwork — that I forgot to notice I’m still standing on the ground, watching her rise.

And only now, as everything begins lining up, do I realize I haven’t tracked the part where she leaves me, leaves our home. She’ll also leave the blue bubble of our city and the fragile sense of safety I’ve tried to build around her — a safety I’ve felt eroding every single day of the past year under Trump 2.0, when every news cycle forces recalibration. Every week, the map of where she can safely exist gets redrawn.

I’m wildly proud of her. But under the pride sits something still and heavy. It’s a grief and a fear I haven’t had space—or stability—to process yet.

Leave a comment

Because the space has been filled. Packed, actually.

With applications and deadlines and a thousand small tasks I convinced myself were “the important part.” And they are. But they also became a place to pour my energy so I didn’t have to acknowledge what preparing her for adulthood actually means in 2026.

Her high school counselor advised parents not to help. “It’s on them,” he said, as if teenagers naturally understand FAFSA leverage or how student loans can shadow them into middle age—as if choosing a college is just about dorm size and dining halls, not about whether the state criminalizes reproductive healthcare.

Respectfully, absolutely not.

This is the last major decision her father and I will help shape. After this, she’s free to consult us only if she chooses to. College is the final act of parenting a child.

And in America right now, it’s also a political survival exercise.

For months, I’ve been in motion: researching colleges, booking tours, nagging her about portfolio deadlines, driving her to National Portfolio Day, comparing programs and scholarship formulas. I’ve overseen SAT prep, art lessons, and the endless FAFSA forms.

I’ve also been teaching her how to drive, how to cook something other than noodles, how to budget, how credit scores work, and how to book doctor’s appointments, as well as managing milestones and paperwork and politics and excitement and dread.

And because we’re living under Trump 2.0, I’ve had to teach her so much more. She’s had to learn how to recognize a safe state versus one that wants control of her womb—which campuses truly offer access to reproductive care, and which ones would criminalize her for needing it. I never imagined that part of launching my daughter would involve reading state-by-state analyses of bodily autonomy.

Then there are her queer friends, the ones who would be legally erased in half the states she’s considering. She has to assess not just academic fit but whether she’ll live in a place that doesn’t see her friends as fully human.

Then this week, we watched in horror as federal enforcement turned fatal even for U.S. citizens, with Renee Good’s recent murder by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. When raw force can touch anyone it begs the question: is any state safe, anymore?

I used to worry about alcohol and campus parties.

Now it’s different. I fear for whether a doctor will treat her if she’s miscarrying. Or whether some “your body, my choice” boy—the kind increasingly common among her Gen Z male peers—will feel entitled to harm her and face no consequences.

The statistics were brutal even when I was her age, with about one in four women experiencing sexual assault before graduation. Today the numbers aren’t better, but the political landscape is worse. Way, way worse. In many red states, laws protect perpetrators and punish victims. Universities bury reports. Men walk away. Women don’t.

And then there’s the question of distance. Yes, it’s always hard for parents to let their babies fly far away from home. But I’m not thinking about homesickness.

I’m thinking: if the U.S. ends up at war, how quickly can I reach her? How quickly can she reach me? It all feels surreal, even as I know the concern isn’t hypothetical.

She’s applied to schools in Ireland and Canada too, because stability and affordability seems easier to locate across borders than within our own. These countries offer abortion access, universal healthcare, and political sanity. Both offer something America currently cannot: the promise that a young woman’s body won’t be used as a political bargaining chip.

Part of me wonders: is it safer for her to put down roots abroad?
To build a life in a country that could eventually grow to feel like home?

Or is the distance itself dangerous — a fault line that could widen if the U.S. fractures further? What happens if our family ends up on literal opposite sides of a war? What does it mean to “launch” one’s child into adulthood when the geopolitical ground is shifting under all of us?

It’s one thing to let your child go.
It’s another to let them go in a country that feels like it’s unraveling.

“Go work on your drawing.”

She rolls her eyes—the Billie Eilish half-lidded stare, but with more depth than attitude. I don’t blame her. I’m the mother who put the artist in a rigorous STEM magnet school. “For the opportunities,” I told myself. “For the foundation,” I told her. Both were true. And also: it was hard.

Physics nearly broke her junior year. Her friends breezed through it. She didn’t. She hated that she didn’t.

She comes by it honestly. I nearly failed physics too — doodling rockets and Bowie lyrics in the margins, hoping creativity counted for something. She fought harder than I ever did. She earned that B-minus point by point. It’s the grade I’m proudest of — because it cost her something.

Physics isn’t her language. Art is.

But my daughter is practical. She loves expensive skincare and UGG boots and financial stability. She doesn’t want the starving artist life. She thinks a business degree might be safer. And maybe it is. But when I remind her that creative business jobs exist — like design management, user experience, branding — she softens, just a little.

I give her options. Exposure. Encouragement.
And then step back enough for her to hear her own voice.

I want to embolden her enough that she can still decide what’s right for her, even through the political chaos.

She’s close.

Not fully decided, not fully ready — but close in a way that’s unmistakable.

Subscribe now

Sometimes I think she was always ready.

When she was eighteen months old, her nanny handed me a piece of paper like treasure. “Have you seen this?” she asked.

I glanced at the page: a circle.

Our house was full of kiddo scribbles, so I shrugged. “The circle?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s a perfect circle. I’ve never seen a child her age draw one like this.”

I looked again. Really looked. There it was — that steadiness, that precision, that quiet concentration she carried even then. A signal flare of who she was becoming.

She’s always known how to draw her own boundaries. Her own lines. Her own future.

And yet I think about the broader circles that have shaped my own life. Roe v. Wade came into law just as I did, a boundary drawn to protect women. A line around autonomy. By the time my daughters were running across school playgrounds, that line was already being erased. They’re coming of age just as the country slides backwards, state by state, dismantling protections my generation assumed were permanent.

Her perfect toddler circle was a symbol of steadiness — but the circles shaping women’s rights in this country are anything but.

It’s a circle, but not the kind my daughter drew back then. Not whole. Not steady. It’s a perfectly awful one — progress and regression looping in on itself.

By the time we see real progress again, my daughters will likely be in late middle-age, as I am now. They’ll be past their reproductive years, past the point where those rights could have protected them.

And still, my daughter has always known how to draw her future. I just wish her country would stop trying to erase it.

Share

My child has received large scholarships to two top design schools. Not a free ride—these places cost a small fortune — but enough to put them into feasible range. And there’s the confidence boost: it’s not just me or her friends telling her she’s talented. These schools are willing to put real money behind it.

I’m elated. I’m relieved. I’m thrilled for her.

She’s still not sure what to do.

So I congratulate her. I tell her how proud I am. And then, because humor is our glue, I add, “You really do need to get at least one rejection or you’re going to turn into a complete asshole.”

She laughs. But I can see the weight of the decision sitting behind her eyes. I hope she knows I see it too — and that in sharing it, I’m trying to lighten it.

For now, I’m building the spreadsheet. We’ll compare financial-aid packages, calculate realistic numbers, and wait for the last few decisions. Then we’ll weigh the political circumstances, as every week brings new horrors. By the time we need to make a final decision in March, who knows where we’ll be as a country.

There’s no commitment yet, no orientation schedule, no dorm shopping list, no physical evidence of her leaving. Which means the grief hasn’t arrived.

Right now we’re in the liminal space where everything is possible and nothing is final. It feels like standing in an airport staring at a departures board: her flight is up there somewhere, but the gate number hasn’t posted.

Until it does, we’re here — laughing, waiting, arguing about shoes and majors and UGG boots and life.

I’m eager for her decision.

But the moment she feels lighter, I know the mama grief will know where to find me.

My fear for our country already has.

I sometimes think about that moment when she turned blue in my arms, when the universe tilted and I thought I was losing my daughter for real, the kind of loss that swallows everything.

Now nearly 17 years after that moment, I know I’m about to lose her. But this is the loss I signed up for as a mom.

This isn’t the grief I imagined then. It’s not devastation. It’s pride. It’s delight. It’s watching her step into herself.

Eventually, she’ll choose a school. She’ll pack a car or a suitcase or a few too many cardboard boxes. She’ll leave behind the room with the messy desk and the half-finished sketches and the closet she always meant to organize. And for the first time in eighteen years, her daily orbit will shift beyond the walls of this house.

I’ll pretend to rearrange furniture or sort laundry, but really I’ll just be standing in the doorway, adjusting to the echo.

This isn’t the catastrophic grief of losing a child.

This is the quieter grief of launching a daughter into a country where her rights are not guaranteed.

She’ll still be mine in all the ways that matter. She just won’t be down the hall.

I can only hope she’ll land somewhere her body is still hers.

Greetings!

I’m , a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m the co-host of The Daily Whatever Show and Editorial & Booking Director here at . I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.

If this story resonated with you, why not buy me a coffee?
(Paying for college is expensive!)

This post is sponsored by NordProtect.

by Cliff Schecter

After a seemingly never-ending weekend of horrific news, from the mass murder of Jews celebrating Hanukkah in Australia to a mass shooting at Brown University back here in America, I searched for the words to convey what I—what many of us—was feeling.

Eventually I conjured up syllables and phrases, best I could, to respond to a third shock-to-the-system—during the two-day respite we call a weekend, because it’s supposed to be when the week ends. But in this world it’s no longer the case. And so it was, with the tragic murders of Rob and Michele Singer Reiner.

As I pondered the larger mysteries of why this happens, and whether our species is made to make it or just some kinda cosmic accident, I thought about his films.

Then it hit me. These jeremiads from his films I quoted in college with some drink in me, as my Brit friends might say, provided two of the most important monologues to explain our present-day crisis.

A yin AND a yang, if you will. Let me explain.

You Can’t Handle The Truth!

As we illegally bomb Caribbean-based boats, hijack tankers and blockade other ships, seemingly preparing for the stupidest, most counterproductive land-war since the last one Republicans tricked us into (we were reminded to “never get into a land war in Asia” in another classic Reiner film, The Princess Bride. I’m quite sure that goes for South America too), I thought about Colonel Nathan Jessup from A Few Good Men.

The penultimate trial scene is one of the more famous in cinema, as Jack Nicholson’s performance oozes arrogance and contempt for the “elites” who don’t get our world, the way he of course does. You can feel him spitting hubris from the other side of the camera. I’d call it very J.D. Vance or Peter Hegseth—except Jessup doesn’t have the charisma of a cadaver (Vance) not possess the brain power of a bird (Hegseth).

The parallels to now almost make it feel like Reiner was preparing us for this moment. Jessup was based in Guantanamo Bay—which is where Hegseth deployed as a “platoon leader for security” from 2004-2005.

Considering it was a black hole for detainee dignity, it’s likely where Hegseth developed a taste for cruelty and violations of international law, just as he did for Johnny Walker. And Jim Beam. And Jack Daniels. Luckily no “Charlie Kirk Wine” (no, I’m not kidding, it’s real).

I don’t think Reiner, who produced the film, and writer Aaron Sorkin, could’ve nailed our present dystopia better than a locating the central part of the plot on the base in Gitmo that would become a post-9/11 gulag, now used to process “migrants.” And have a central theme of this masterpiece be about torture committed by our men, with the question asked and answered: are they required to ignore illegal orders from fascistic commanders?

So we’re off, with that epic moment from 1992’s A Few Good Men:

LTJG Kaffee: Colonel Jessup! Did you order the Code Red?!

Judge Randolph: You don’t have to answer that question!

Col Jessup: I’ll answer the question. You want answers?

LTJG Kaffee: I think I’m entitled to them.

Col Jessup: You want answers!?!

LTJG Kaffee: I want the truth!

Col Jessup: You can’t handle the truth!!

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know -- that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.

You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall -- you need me on that wall.

We use words like “honor,” “code,” “loyalty.” We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.

I would rather that you just said “thank you” and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand the post. Either way, I don’t give a DAMN what you think you’re entitled to!

LTJG Kaffee: Did you order the Code Red?

Col Jessup: I did the job --

LTJG Kaffee: -- Did you order the Code Red?!

Col Jessup: YOU’RE GOD DAMN RIGHT I DID!!!

I can never fully express my appreciation for the men and women who take the ultimate risk guarding those walls. But Jessup’s protestation of having “neither the time nor inclination to explain” himself to a prosecutor and/or judge in a courtroom?

Sorry pal, that ain’t it, not close to constitutionally acceptable. Which is why it wasn’t until Hegseth, Noem, Homan, Patel, Bondi and the rest of the broken-toy, beating-heart-of-darkness-bitch brigade ascended into positions of power that the elected and appointed civilian stewards of our democracy began to be flipped off like they were Donald Trump…anywhere.

When Jessup says “I’d prefer a simple thank you and be on my way” and then adds his primal scream, “I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to,” this is exactly what Hegseth now wants. Reporters get banned from the Pentagon for not turning in their questions ahead of time. Congressional subpoenas, questions and court orders are ignored.

There’s a name for this: Dictatorship. Even back in 1992, Rob Reiner saw it coming.

We’re a democratic republic. We have a Congress—even if its “Speaker” is an impotent cheese doodle who’s prostrated himself before Trump and spends his time monitoring his son’s porn. Meaning: this isn’t your call, Pete-o.

You damn well fucking better take the time and have the inclination to explain yourself to the people’s elected representatives and our judicial branch. That’s how it works. Or maybe you’ll find yourself on the other side of those Gitmo bars at some point.

I suppose it isn’t a complete surprise that Reiner and Sorkin saw all this in 1992, not long after the very-obviously-guilty perpetrators of Iran-Contra walked away scot-free, and we engaged in whatever the hell Panama and Grenada were, other than polling boosts for Bedtime with Bonzo.

Past is inevitably prologue if not punished.

I was so busy keeping my job, I forgot to do my job

Has a phrase ever been more apt for too many Democrats and the leadership of the party as a fascist force tries to end our democratic experiment? Those simply refusing to craft a simple narrative for how a herd of sick billionaires and their DC butlers jointly robbed us of our rights and financial security by directly assaulting our democracy and economy—which go hand-in-hand.

Supporting this simple and true narrative with a emotionally and culturally resonant messages, and undergirding them with wholesale policy changes we’ll make when we sweep their venal asses out of office in ‘26, should be a top priority. It should be tied to stories from our past, and part of an argument not to return to the America we were, but our ability to overcome any obstacle to become the America we’ve always sought to be.

President Andy Shepherd (Michael Douglas) gives the speech below from The American President, when he finally breaks away from from a DC-political-consultant mentality, or the Schumer-Jeffries mode of caution, caving and small-bore change.

In the film, President Shepherd shows all the behaviors that drive us nuts—a lack of willingness to hit back when attacked, go on offense, create a narrative about his opponent, or go big on policy. He allows this oleaginous, overbearing d*k-in-a-box, (looks like Mitch McConnell, sounds like Ted Cruz) right-wing crank, Senator Rumson, to attack him using what else, but GOP-culture-war garbage.

Shepherd’s aides vociferously encourage him to respond. But he—like Democratic leaders looking at polling on crime and immigration and cowering instead of countering—thinks what people believe is sacrosanct. Who is he to argue with them? It’s not like you can persuade people and change poll numbers, right?

Finally, President Shepherd gets it, catches a whiff of the verbal beatdown he must dropship on Rumson, and just comes out firing, messaging, counter-messaging, and fully takes apart his Ultra-MAGA opponent in the exact way Democrats should every day:

Reporter: Robyn, will the President ever respond to Senator Rumson’s question about being a member of the American Civil Liberties Union?

President Shepherd: Yes, he will. Good morning. [Members of the White House Press Corps begin to rise] It’s alright. Please keep your seats. Good morning.

For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being President of this country was, to a certain extent, about character. And although I’ve not been willing to engage in his attacks on me, I have been here three years and three days, and I can tell you without hesitation: Being President of this country is entirely about character.

For the record, yes, I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU, but the more important question is “Why aren’t you, Bob?” Now this is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it naturally begs the question, why would a senator, his party’s most powerful spokesman and a candidate for President, choose to reject upholding the constitution? Now if you can answer that question, folks, then you’re smarter than I am, because I didn’t understand it until a few hours ago.

America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ‘cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.”

You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms.

Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.

I’ve known Bob Rumson for years. And I’ve been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn’t get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it. Bob’s problem is that he can’t sell it!

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.

You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family, and American values and character, and you wave an old photo of the President’s girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. You tell them she’s to blame for their lot in life. And you go on television and you call her a whore.

Sydney Ellen Wade has done nothing to you, Bob. She has done nothing but put herself through school, represent the interests of public school teachers, and lobby for the safety of our natural resources. You want a character debate, Bob? You better stick with me, ‘cause Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league.

I’ve loved two women in my life. I lost one to cancer. And I lost the other ‘cause I was so busy keeping my job, I forgot to do my job. Well, that ends right now.

Tomorrow morning the White House is sending a bill to Congress for its consideration. It’s White House Resolution 455, an energy bill requiring a twenty percent reduction of the emission of fossil fuels over the next ten years. It is by far the most aggressive stride ever taken in the fight to reverse the effects of global warming.

The other piece of legislation is the crime bill. As of today, it no longer exists. I’m throwing it out. I’m throwing it out and writing a law that makes sense. You cannot address crime prevention without getting rid of assault weapons and hand guns. I consider them a threat to national security, and I will go door to door if I have to, but I’m gonna convince Americans that I’m right, and I’m gonna get the guns.

We’ve got serious problems, and we need serious people. And if you want to talk about character, Bob, you’d better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up. This a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.

My name is Andrew Shepherd, and I AM the President.

Reiner gave us both of these gifts 30 years ago. Perhaps, as he rests in peace after a life of service and accomplishment, we can accept them now. RIP Rob and Michele Singer Reiner. Let’s honor all that they were by implementing what they were telling us in these two all-time great movie monologues, and take our damn democracy back.

Well, my friends, I had the absolute pleasure of crashing The Daily Whatever Show on Friday with Dana Dubois and Lawrence Winnerman!

Even if we had to discuss the usual failures of corporate media, GOP fascism, and MAGA’s honestly, very-creepy martyrdom complex.

These two smart, funny, slightly unhinged—in a good way! Not a Trump Smash because my wang shrivels when queried by tough female reporters way—voices are exactly what Blue Amp Media needs more of!

So luckily, I just went ahead and hired them and now, as well as doing this great show of theirs, they’re helping us grow The Blue Amp Media Cinematic Universe! Sometimes, my friends, the world works out.

Dana and Lawrence aren’t just great hosts—they’re builders. What they’re creating with The Daily Whatever Show is the kinda community that doubles as group therapy for people who read the news while possessing a functioning conscience. Sure, they (we) swear a little too much, and we all still must laugh while democracy is on fire, or we’ll just cry.

But that’s not an easy balance. And damn, my friends, they pull it off!

It was Effed-Up Friday, which means each of us brought with us our pick for the most deeply deranged news story of the weeks. Folks, this competition was fierce!

Sure, not Stephen Miller’s wife running away to join the Elon Musk circus fierce, but nonetheless, there was tension in the air.

So, yes, we had to discuss the requisite stories of Pete Hegseth The Pirate of the Caribbean, Donald Trump getting better sleep during meetings than Mel Brooks’ 2000 year old man—and looking older too!—and Trump completely prostrating himself before Vlad Putin’s moobs….but I decided to step out of usual politics mode for my magically delicious F-ed up news descriptor.

I went with…well, let’s call it a more digestible story. At least for those of us listening to the tale, and not trying to actually consume this news. I’ll explain.

A man in New Zealand, based on seeing the film Octopussy (great flick, btw! My hot take? Roger Moore was outstanding as James Bond) stole a Fabergé egg, swallowed it whole. He then was arrested—you know, thievery and such are illegal—and spent six days under police supervision while officers waited for him to, uh… make it reappear!

Diamond-encrusted! Fully digested! A crime, a medical emergency, and a workplace HR violation for those cops, all rolled into one. Bet those cops loved telling their friends and/or significant others what the main case they were pursuing was for six days…

Lawrence followed with something far darker—and scarier: The Heritage Foundation openly threatening the entire state of Indiana after Republicans there refused to ram through extreme-gerrymandered maps. Roads, funding, military bases—basically a mob boss ransom note, but on really pretty letterhead. It was a sobering reminder that authoritarianism doesn’t always whisper. These days it tweets.

And then Dana dropped the hammer.

Her story—about the grotesque martyrdom-industrial complex springing up around Charlie Kirk, including a literal bottle of “I Am Charlie Kirk” red wine—wasn’t just absurd. It was revealing.

The instant myth-making. The guilt-free—even eager—monetization of death. The way propaganda is packaged, sold, and distributed by a deeply, morally-damaged right wing media complex, and swallowed whole by so many of its viewers, readers and clickers.

(Really right wingers in general ever since they took a guy who hung with lepers and thought rich people sucked and turned him into an supply-side, AR-15 Jesus.).

It was sharp, unsettling, and par for the course with this cultish crew.

The audience agreed. Dana’s story took Effed-Up Friday honors, for good reason.

What made the whole episode a blast wasn’t just the stories—it was the chemistry. Dana’s clarity, Lawrence’s instincts (and don’t forget beard! The man has game!!), and a shared refusal to treat insanity as normal. That’s corporate media’s job.

Not treating any of this shit as normal? That’s our secret sauce. That’s this community.

I laughed. I swore. I learned new phrases I’ll never unlearn, and more about the human gastrointestinal system than any of us should ever be forced to grasp.

The Daily Whatever Show isn’t just fun—it’s necessary in these times.

Welcome to the family, you two. This is what building something real, constructing an actual edifice for sustainable independent media, looks like.

Thank you , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a,

Share

Cliff’s Note: Politics isn’t just policy — it’s the lives we live and the stories that shape us. That’s why we’re launching BAM Culture, a new section digging into where culture and politics collide. As we head toward 2026, understanding that intersection is mission-critical.

If you believe independent media matters, subscribe and help us build the movement that’s going to help save this country.

—Cliff

By Dana DuBois

“I don’t think I’ll ever live to see 70,” my dad sighed, turning toward me as he paused at the traffic light.

My dad had me in his mid-20s, right about the age I was when we had this conversation. My brain was barely on the cusp of adulthood. Too young to know how to respond. Too young to be handed that kind of emotional weight. The light turned green and he turned his focus back to the road, and away from me, thankfully.

I had no idea what to say.

Because honestly? I didn’t disagree with him. By his early fifties, he’d already had five — yes, five — angioplasties. His mother, my namesake, died of a heart attack at 50. And he had the whole cardiac-risk vibe going for him: overweight, barrel-chested, subsisting on a terrible diet, and fueled by Type-A rage.

It didn’t bode well for longevity.

But looking back now, decades later, I’m struck by the lack of boundaries in that moment. Why tell your twenty-something daughter you’re pretty sure you won’t make it? I didn’t have the emotional capacity then.

He didn’t have the emotional tools, ever.

I still don’t have an answer to those questions. But I believe he wasn’t so much hoping for a wise reply from me as he was reckoning with himself, with an audience. Perhaps he feared dying young.

Or maybe he feared what would happen if he didn’t.

Spoiler: he didn’t die young.

I’m now older than he was when he said it.

But he’s still here — more or less.

I can’t say that my dad is happy now. But I’m not sure he ever aimed for happiness. He was more invested in verbally dominating anyone who inconvenienced him and watching sports he could bet on.

We’ve never been close. His anger was a consistent presence in my childhood, and emotional availability wasn’t part of the repertoire. Losing him early would not have been devastating. Perhaps that’s why I froze in the car when he mentioned his likely early demise.

But he did make it to 70. Against his own odds.

For his 70th, he wanted a family trip — me, my brother, our kids. So we met in San Diego at a resort he and his wife loved. I braced myself but showed up. He’d earned that much by simply making it to 70.

My girls were six and four. He was elated to see them; they didn’t know what to make of him. It took only minutes for him to drop one of his legendary inappropriate comments, and it was a doozy. “When you’re older, will you share your boyfriends with Annika?” he asked my eldest.

The kids stared, stunned. I intervened, gently but firmly. And I spent the entire trip ensuring he was never alone with either of them.

Later, on his birthday dinner outing, he was unable to parallel park his giant rental car — something he’d never done much living in Florida. His wife shrieked from the backseat, “You’re doing it wrong!” He yelled back, telling her to shut up. Annika covered her ears and cowered, horrified.

My kids are Pacific Northwest children — raised on passive-aggressive conflict, not screaming.

“I’ll do it,” I told him gently, referencing my Seattle-parallel-parking credentials. He didn’t want to give up the wheel — driving was always a man’s job — but we had a reservation to make, and he’s nothing if not food-motivated.

Once everyone was out of the car and on the curb, I backed it in with ease.

“This is how they are,” I told the girls later. “Not happy, but not unhappy. Just… fine. Thankfully, they live far away. Can we get through this for a couple more days?”

They nodded, absorbing — for the first time — how other childhoods existed.

And this is how he made it to 70: fraying a bit at the edges, but still essentially himself.

My dad lives in a memory care unit now, since his wife died three years ago. Moving him there in the days following her funeral was agonizing. But now? It’s his normal. He’s the star bingo player. He answers all the “On This Day in History” questions during morning trivia. He plays balloon volleyball.

He beams during pet therapy visits.

He likes the food in the cafeteria. He’s somehow managed to gain quite a bit of weight in spite of the portion restrictions. We suspect he’s convinced the staff to bring seconds… or thirds.

Sometimes he colors. On my last visit, he proudly held up a page with a crab and a wave. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

“It sure is, Dad.”

It’s strange to see him like this, the tyrant of my youth now a docile old man with crayons. I can see he’s doing okay.

Not thriving, but fine.

Not happy, but content enough.

But I can also see the man he was. And that man would rather have died than live like this.

I called my dad for his 81st birthday.

He can’t use his iPhone independently, so I have to call the nurses’ desk for someone to hand him the phone.

“I miss my mom and dad so much,” he told me.

This was new. He’d never talked like this in his fully cognitive life, nor in the early years of dementia.

“Tell me about that,” I said.

“Well, the people here, their parents come to visit them. And I’m here all alone.”

He knows who I am. He knows I’m his daughter. But he rounds everything — need, loneliness, longing — down to the simplest form of love he can name: parents.

He wants his mother. He wants his daughter. He wants someone who feels like home.

I don’t correct him. That feels cruel now.

“Well, one of these days soon I will get down there again.”

“Good,” he replied. “Because I’m 81 years old now. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here.”

I think, I’ve heard you say that before.

And here you still are.

As hard as dementia is, it’s been a strange mercy.

Dementia stripped away my dad’s anger. It pulled back his defensiveness. It revealed the vulnerable little boy who never really learned how to father anyone, including himself.

It doesn’t justify what he was like when I was growing up.

But it does contextualize it.

In losing pieces of himself, he’s gained something gentler. And I’ve gained access to a part of him that never existed for me before.

Does he feel the healing too? Does he sense how much lighter his relationships are without rage running the show?

I hope so.

If not dawning peace, then what is the point of his limited, liminal final stage of life?

So happy birthday, Dad.

Eighty-one is legitimately old age. You’ve made it, against all the odds, including your own.

I hope you’re finding some peace in your here and now — your own dementia-fueled reckoning with the life you ended up living, instead of the one you imagined.

You thought you’d die young. Instead, you lived long enough to become someone I can finally meet with compassion.

And here you still are.

I’m grateful for these final strange, blurry years you never thought you’d have.

I hope you are too.