Re "Crosby, Stills & Nash revel in nostalgia" (Tribune, Aug. 24):

The nostalgia for me was for a time when edgy lyrics of songs like the group's Vietnam War era "Chicago" were taken seriously, compared to the passivity of most Americans — and most Red Butte concert-goers — to the increasing injustice, erosion of democratic values and narcissism of a potentially great nation, as wealth flows to the top 1 percent.

Walk around a campus today — you wouldn't know we've been fighting a land war in Asia the past 10 years. But since it's a different 1 percent of Americans — America's working-class from small towns and barrios — who are dying for democracy, their fellow citizens can turn up their iPods and tune out the war.

The group's song "Almost Gone," about mistreated Bradley Manning, fell on deaf ears — 95 percent clueless as to his role in Wikileaks. Bored concert-goers turned to smart phones for diversion, much as Nero fiddled as his Rome burned.

"Our house," now divided, could indeed be "a very, very, very fine house," but Crosby, Stills & Nash, despite their best efforts, have become part of the bread and circuses of our own late empire.

Robert W. King

Salt Lake City