The Bad Penny (beta)

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In the latest installment of The Bad Penny‘s On Tyranny series, we catch up with esteemed composer, singer and conductor Ted Hearne about Authoritarian America and his new album, Farming (Deathbomb Arc). The engrossing, story-based album – which dropped a week ago – ingeniously compares the philosophies of Pennsylvania founder William Penn and Amazon mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos as a way of getting to better understand what lies at the heart of America and its values. Hearne examines labor rights, capitalism and the U.S.’s rapidly changing economy – and how they contributed to the strife currently raging across the nation.

“Culture-war rhetoric very often serves to paper over another reality, and what I think is the underlying tension we should be focusing on, which is the ever-widening wealth gap,” Hearne says. “Most wealthy people in this country … the work to sustain their wealth are investing choices. And then wealth begets itself and grows. This is not the wealth of manufacturing ingenuity most of the time. People know that, and people who labor to make things know that. And there’s a deep anger about that. I’m angry about it too.”