It feels like a hard rain is falling – sort of like buckets of hailstones pelleting our bodies as soon as we step into the flood of news. Most of us are asking, “What do I do now?” Bob Dylan, a legitimate recipient of a Nobel Prize, had an answer:
I’m a-goin back out fore the rain starts a fallin
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
And the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten
Where black is the color and none is the number
And I’ll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain a gonna fall
Dylan wrote that song in 1962 when he was 21 years old. As prescient as he was, I’m sure he had no idea how many pellets would be poisoning our water and how hard they would fall. To me, our current situation feels like a very dark forest. I’m seeing lots of people with empty hands. I’m watching the rich build palatial homes in the valley alongside more prisons for the poor. I’m hearing about atrocities being committed with no accountability for those who execute those acts.
What I’m not hearing is enough people telling the story, speaking truth to power, thinking creatively, and spending every breathing moment fighting for our values. What I’m not hearing is a clear song that will bring people together in a unified effort to build peace, prosperity, and partnerships.
Fortunately, there is an old singer standing on this ocean of chaos that keeps on singin: Neil Young, who started performing at the tender age of 17 in 1963, is still holding concerts to spread his message. Not surprisingly, he and Bob Dylan actually performed together on several occasions. Now that’s what I call two powerful voices. Their voices may not have been in perfect harmony, but their words were. Here are the lyrics of Neil Young’s newest release. He knows his song well:
No more great again
No more great again
Got big crime in DC at the White House
Don’t need no fascist rules
Don’t want no fascist schools
Don’t want soldiers walking on our streets
Got big crime in DC at the White House
There’s big crime in DC at the White House
Got to get the fascists out
Got to clean the White House out
Don’t want no soldiers on our streets
Got big crime in DC at the White House
Got big crime in DC at the White House
No more great again
No more great again
Got big crime in DC at the White House
No more money to the fascists
The billionaire fascists
Time to blackout the system
No more great again
No more great again
Time to blackout the system
Got big crime in DC at the White House
Maybe we should turn to the poets for inspiration instead of politicians.
And here we are. This administration is poisoning our waters while countries around the world are publicly pretending to cave in to Trump’s bullying. Privately, many are pivoting to our most challenging adversaries in order to preserve their supply chains and position themselves for whatever the future brings. In a big military parade China hosted last week, leaders from over 20 countries, with Russia and North Korea as special guests and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cambodia, Cuba, Vietnam, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Congo, Serbia, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe as supporting cast, courted favor with President Xi. Modi, President of India, attended the day before but also proclaimed China’s power and promoted their individual relationship. A sobering fact to remember is that the combined population of China and India is almost 3 billion people. If you add the populations of the other 25 countries attending the parade, the number would exceed 4 billion—more than half the world’s population. The US population is about 340 million and declining. Personally, I don’t like a 10-to-1 disadvantage.
Sadly, we can’t rely on Dylan (now 85) and Young (now 80) to stop this “rain” of terror. WE will all have to come together with a compelling song and substantive solutions for the problems we are facing.
Over 50 years ago, I wrote a training manual on problem solving with Dr. William Anthony, the Executive Director of the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University based on the Art of Problem Solving by Dr. Robert Carkhuff. We built the guide around three key questions:
What is the situation?
What are the root causes?
What are some possible directions we might take to address the problem.
Situation, Cause, and Direction. That simple formula has served me well for my entire career. When I asked those questions about the problems we are facing today, here are three quick summaries I came up with:
Situation: The world is publicly pivoting to China as the US is poisoning its relationships with alliance partners. In a recent NYT column, Kurt Campbell, a Deputy Secretary of State under Biden, and Rush Doshi, the Senior Director for China in the National Security Council, spell out how China has surpassed us in GDP, manufacturing, academic publications, and patents for new technologies and is about even on military spending. They suggest that the only way to compete with China moving forward is to strengthen our alliances. In another column on the same day (September 7, 2025), Ezra Klein implores us to quit pretending that all of the Trump performance is normal. He calls out the DOGE chain-sawing its way through government, the firing of dedicated civil servants, the revocation of grants, the executive orders demanding persecution of his “enemies,” and the shocking tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and the rest of the world. This administration is essentially poisoning our partnerships, our environment, our health care system, our positioning in world trade, our economy, our educational system, and the military.
Causes: Trump prioritizes self-interest and ego satisfaction over the common good. He puts far more energy into his “performances” than his policies. He is more interested in power than people. And he places more importance on privilege than on purpose.
Directional Possibilities: WE need to write a new song that will mobilize more people. There are “C’s” of opportunity:
Confidence: Create a rules-based order that ensures our borders are secure, our streets are safe, and our institutions can be trusted.
Collaboration: Build alliances and partnerships locally and globally.
Cost of living: Focus on food costs and housing costs.
Care: Point out how health care access, quality, and choice are all going down while costs are going up.
Compassion: Continue to communicate the cruelty and unfairness that people are experiencing—a feeling of belonging matters.
Clarity: Push for clear policies instead of chaos, for facts as well as feelings, and for truth instead of lies.
Character: Remind people that character counts and values need to be protected—integrity matters.
Constitution: Return to the principles on which this country was founded.
Conduct: Hold people and organizations (corporations) accountable for their behavior.
Conversation. Get out in the streets and talk to people instead of talking down to them from the Ivory Tower
Culture: Create a community of interdependence, integrity, and innovation.
Connection: Craft policies that respond to people’s deepest aspirations instead to telling them they are stupid and wrong.
Curiosity: Foster open and honest inquiry.
Credibility: Do what you say and give people hope that words can be trusted.
To me, the Democratic messaging needs to clearly describe the situation, succinctly identify the causes, and compellingly promote a new direction that will appeal to the old and the young, to male and female, and to people of every race and economic circumstance. The message has to be clear, concise, and compelling. And it doesn’t need to alliterate. I’m not sure which of the dozen or so directional possibilities should drive the campaign to get us off the authoritarian path we are racing down (or stop the hard rain from becoming ICE balls), but I do know it needs to represent a majority of our fellow citizens. We can’t have 40 messages crafted to satisfy every constituency. We need to land on a message that will result in winning the House in 2026 and the Senate in 2028. For me, 3 is a good number. Pick the three themes that will mobilize enough people to win.
Perhaps what we have finally learned is that, in America, performance trumps policy. Maybe Taylor, Beyoncé, Bruce, BTS, Selena, Justin, Rihanna, Bruno, Ariana, Katy, Lamar, Drake, Kendrick (yes, they could drop their feud to promote a greater good), Billie, Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny, etc. should form a collaborative coalition to promote the 3 most compelling “C’s.” Hey, they have a fanbase in the billions. If people prefer hearing songs to substance, then why not?
I’m hoping we will quit flooding our waters with pellets of poison, and I’m hoping our beloved singers keep on singin. I’m also hoping WE can pivot as a nation to value alliances, partnerships, and relationships. Finally, I’m hoping we can deepen our message and broaden our reach. May it be so.
P.S. I quoted the “hard rain” verse from Bob Dylan in a previous post, but it deserves repeating.
Keep spreading the word, and singing the song my friend…thank you!