Politics & Power Quote by Arlo Guthrie

“Greed and globalization aren’t just America’s fault” lands like a folk singer’s reality check: less a defense of U.S. power than a refusal to let the rest of the world off the hook. Coming from Arlo Guthrie, whose cultural inheritance includes protest music and an instinctive suspicion of official narratives, the line plays against type in a useful way. Instead of the easy chorus - blame Washington, blame Wall Street - he widens the frame to complicity.

The intent is corrective. It pushes back on a comforting moral geometry where America is the sole villain and everyone else is merely acted upon. Guthrie’s phrasing does two things at once: it concedes that America matters (“just” implies it’s part of the story) while insisting that greed is portable and globalization is co-authored. Multinationals aren’t national mascots; supply chains are built from countless decisions made by consumers, investors, governments, and aspiring middle classes across borders. The subtext is almost accusatory: if you like the cheap goods, the status symbols, the export-driven growth, you’re in the deal.

Contextually, it fits a post-Cold War world where Americanization is both a real force and a convenient alibi. “Globalization” often gets spoken about as weather - something that happens to us. Guthrie turns it back into politics and appetite, a human project with beneficiaries everywhere. It’s also a warning to protest culture itself: righteous outrage can become a way of outsourcing responsibility. The line works because it denies the listener a clean moral exit, which is exactly what good folk music has always done when it’s being honest.