∼ ∼ ∼ This article begins a new series — History Bites — that will combine U.S. and world history, politics, pop culture, and the arts to illustrate how the past can illuminate the problems of the present. ∼ ∼ ∼
Way back in 1989, Billy Joel perhaps saw the future of our own benighted age of listicles when he released his No. 1 hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Name-checking events from the singer/songwriter’s birth year of 1949 through the following four decades, the lyrics include such 1950s’ refs as Joseph Stalin, Roy Cohn, the Communist Bloc, “Rock Around the Clock,” and “Starkweather homicide / children of thalidomide,” before the whole song pivots in 1963, when the Bronx-born piano man hoarsely cries out:
JFK
blown away
what else do I have to say?
Still, he soldiers on through the Seventies —
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airlineAyatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
and the Eighties —
Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under martial law
Rock and roller, cola wars, I can’t take it anymore
all while hammering multiple choruses of
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning, since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it
Fall Out Boy updated the song in 2023, with more assonance and less chronological exactitude — “World Trade, second plane / What else do I have to say?” comes well after “Trump gets impeached twice / Polar bears got no ice,” but their rockin’ hearts were in the right place.
So here we are, in 2025, and the world’s burning hotter than ever. One flameout, though, was President Trump’s much-vaunted release of the JFK assassination files, which brought no new smoke to the smog of conspiracy theories that have shrouded that national tragedy for over six decades. Meanwhile, the richest man in the world — “Elon Musk, Kaepernick / Texas failed electric grid,” as he appeared on Fall Out Boy’s list two years ago — took a metaphorical (and clumsily literal) chainsaw to government programs that help middle class and poor Americans, and internationally, those in need of food and medical care.
Many Americans believe that Trump is turning the economy into a dumpster fire, and this past Saturday, New Yorkers joined millions of their fellow citizens across the nation to protest a regime of political and social arsonists. Marching from Bryant Park to Madison Square Park, protesters lofted signs demanding that the Trump regime keep its “Hands Off!” Social Security, Medicare, labor laws, immigrants’ and women’s and LGBQT rights, veterans’ benefits, and all of the other components of modern civilization this authoritarian-leaning administration is looking to dismantle.
And these huddled masses have a few things to celebrate. First, although Musk dumped millions into trying to buy a crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, one with national voting implications, democracy trumped cash. That same day, April 1, New Jersey senator Cory Booker set a record with a marathon speech in the Senate chamber centering on Trump’s and Musk’s evisceration of the federal workforce, threats to Social Security and Medicare, and, in general, attacks on the most vulnerable Americans. As Booker pointed out during his oration, which garnered international attention, “… 2,000 times [the Bible] mentions poverty, and does it say we should scorn the poor? Does it say we should ignore the poor? No. It calls us to love our neighbor, no exceptions to that.”
Perhaps it’s time for another update of Joel’s fire-fighting anthem, from … Taylor Swift? Bad Bunny? Billie Eilish? Kendrick Lamar? Whoever it is, perhaps April 5, 2025, will mark the day when Americans began fighting the firebug in the White House with fire, and finally exposing him as the con man he’s always been. And then we’ll hear some new rhymes:
Americans fight for Democracy
While Musk salutes a Nazi
Yeah, sure, it needs work … but that’s what we all have to do now: Put in the work.
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