Maybe we're all looking in the wrong direction.

The American legal system has always been weird, beyond excuses - with it its 999 year sentences, young exec. style attourneys pleading for the death sentence, and underlying it all - the strange symbiotic relationship with organised crime.

However that song by Phil Ochs. What power and Dostoevskian intensity! Instead of thinking about the negatives - we should be asking why our societies (England and America) are losing talents like Ochs, Jackson C. Frank, Nick Drake, Peter Bellamy. Why can't we sustain and nurture talents like this?

The traddies can say - its all about the tradition. But what is it all about for contemporary writers. Surely we're not to weighed and measured and valued in the profit and loss terms of tin pan alley. When we uncover a talent that can write a song like the OP posted. We need to be able to cherish, honour and support it - as a society.

If we get the positives sorted out about our society - maybe we will be strong enough to confront the negatives.