Los Angeles Is Many Places

America Is Not A Wily, Sneaky Nation. We Don't Think That Way. We Don't Think Much At All, Thank God. Start Thinking And Pretty Soon You Get Ideas, And Then You Get Idealism, And The Next Thing You Know You've Got Ideology, With Millions Dead In Concentration Camps And Gulags.

I Don't See Evidence Of America Being A Poorer Country Than It Was 20 Years Ago. I've Seen Impoverished Devastation. I've Seen Places Where Things Had Been Good And Now They Were Very Bad.

The Wonder Is That Communism Lasted So Long. But Then Again, Modern Poetry Lasted A Long Time, Too.

Then Basically What Was Happening Was That It Was The Middle '80s, And Rolling Stone Realized That A Lot Of Their Readers Had Voted For [ronald] Reagan, And They Were Going, "gosh! We Need A Republican! Does Anybody Know A Republican? Wait A Minute! I Think P.j.'s A Republican!"

I'm Old Enough To Remember When The Air Over American Cities Was A Lot Dirtier Than It Is Now.