It Don't Bother Me

There is a wonderful song which ends a wonderful movie called "Nashville," directed by Robert Altman.  A waif, who has been trying to sing a song through the entire movie, but never gets the stage, or when she does, it's at a motor speedway and her voice is drowned out, finally gets to belt out her song, "It don't bother me." And what she sings is, "You may say, I'm not free, but it don't bother me."
And you realize, having watched the film, having watched the forces of wealth and power, having watched the cynical manipulation of public opinion by the upper 1%, by the smarmy, by the unctuous, by the winners, you realize how un free all those strivers in the seething hoi polloi, all those dreamers, who think they will hit it big some day, who believe they will make it, you realize, it don't bother them to not be free.
My father was very disappointed visiting Spain when Franco was still in power, looking about at all the cafe life on the streets and seeing all the ostensibly happy people living in this dictatorship. "They were all so...happy."   It didn't bother them they were not "free." They could not complain in public about their government. 
So what? 
Are we really any more in control of our society than those Spaniards?
Or, more to the point, are we any more in control of our individual fates in the Live Free or Die state than those Spaniards?
Big money is in control. The Supreme Court is determined to keep it that way. Congress is bought and paid for. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity like it that way. 
Why should you or I care?
Maybe Barack Obama, much as I love him, or the idea of him, is really just another Jimmy Carter--a decent man, but not a strong leader. And maybe, worse yet, his followers really are effete, weak kneed, insufficiently aroused or insufficiently arousable, nice people but, in the end, losers. 
And maybe the future does not belong to losers. Maybe it belongs to the one percenters.
Maybe that's cosmic justice. The way America is supposed to work. Those who want wealth and power go after it,  and the rest of us are content to live our lives without it, because, well, it don't bother me.