Indifference not an option if 1916 values we have been honouring are to prevail

It is unlikely that the victory, for how ever long it stands, in America’s culture wars represented by the gathering clouds of the Trump presidency might nurture the next David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, or Guy Clark. Or even the next Janet Reno, the first woman to serve as America’s attorney general, writes Raymond Williams.

The ambiguity, the splendid exoticism, and difference-as-a-vocabulary of Bowie and Prince would be too discomforting for those contemporary fundamentalists in their high-fiving moment of triumph.

The open-hearted honesty, the emotional rawness and awareness of Cohen or Clark would be too awkward for those who see a preordained world in a black-or-white, you’re-with-us-or-against-us series of simplicities.