Its all good: America – A Requiem?

As Bob Dylan says during the last song of his album 'Together through life';

“Cold blooded killer stomp into town,

Cop car's blinkin', somethin' bad goin' down,

Buildings are crumblin' in the neighbourhood,

But there's nothin' to worry about 'cause it's all good,

It's all good, I say its all good”

Bob Dylan is an artist that is hard to encapsulate, on one level he can quite rightly be regarded as a cultural icon and a visionary lyricist and on another he could be argued to be a vein fraud. Is one description correct and the other false? I would argue that there is an element of truth to both, and that the arc of his life in many ways is an interesting metaphor for the rise and decline of that bizarre beast that is the United States of America.

Born in a rural backwater of an industrial powerhouse booming its way to global domination after the worst conflict which the world has ever seen. Rising in its aftermath as the undoubted ‘master of the world’ the United States had an unprecedented global reach and hegemony which no other nation has ever surpassed. Both brilliant and hollow the shining mirage of the American Dream dazzled a globe both with alluring lights of plenty and the light of white phosphorus on those who happened to get in the way.

Like the artist, the beast is now old, too many cigarettes and a binge of fossil fuel economic hedonism have left a rising empire languishing in its own entropic decay.

Whether or not it has a sane retirement after a booming heyday, who can say?