Certainly there is a “down for dough” mentality that’s pervasive everywhere in our country now. Hip hop used to be a source for societal change and hope (acts like Public Enemy or NWA), but now it’s just a bunch of thugs down to get paid. That’s not about change—that’s about getting mine, which often means not getting yours.
Yeah, and there is something about that I find a little bit surprising, because one of the reasons you haven’t seen the widespread societal upheaval over the Iraq or Afghanistan military actions is because there’s no draft. Because middle-class white kids aren’t being forced to go die for someone’s stupid ideology. But the volunteer army is largely made up of a bunch of urban kids from the lower or working classes, and yet the music coming out on urban radio doesn’t have anything to do with Edwin Starr’s “War” or songs like that. Which is a shame, because there’s a great, untapped wellspring of power in terms of the art that comes out of the urban community. Which just isn’t happening now.

Maybe the kids from these urban environments are so attuned to internecine warfare from growing up when gangs were fighting over turf and crack-distribution rights, that the idea of going off to some hot, dusty place to strap on a gat and shoot people doesn’t seem that extreme to them anymore. It’s just another turf war.
I think it has a lot to do with the unique property of the U.S., which is very different from Europe or Latin America, which is this insistence on the focal point being about “me” rather than “we.” It’s certainly evidenced in our health-care system, our rap music. We’re not all in the same boat, we’re all in our own boats, and it’s key that my boat is bigger than your boat.

Faster than yours, too. Boy, what a great contribution to the world that is.
[Laughs] Well, there are certainly counter streams to this trend, as well. There’ve always been. The Nightwatchman’s One Man Revolution record is part of the long, historical thread of American protest music, from Joe Hill to Woody Guthrie to the MC5 and Rage Against The Machine, through Public Enemy, System Of A Down, Steve Earle, and Bob Dylan. This healthy counter-trend helps to galvanize the troops against the oncoming darkness.

I wonder if the controversy about veteran care will finally expose the engineers of this war as truly cynical and totally compromised.
I really do think it goes back to “Mission Accomplished.” This administration doesn’t care one lick about soldiers, it absolutely doesn’t care one iota about democracy. All you need to do is stop for a minute and ask yourself, “Who’s winning?” Well, Afghanistan or Iraq or the United States isn’t winning, so who is? I’ll tell you: Halliburton’s winning, that’s who. There’s a lot of blood and oil, smoke and mirrors, deflecting attention. On this record, and on all the music I’ve made, I’ve tried to make it as uncompromising and uncompromised as possible. Whether I was making DJ scratching noises on my guitar or shredding solos in the past, on this one it’s down to three chords and the truth. Or two and a half—three is one chord too many.

The Stooges’ law of the land. Is there any one song on this record that you think is emblematic of the Nightwatchman character?
There’s two. “One Man Revolution” was the last song I wrote for the record, and it kind of lays out the manifesto as I see it. And “Maximum Firepower” is the Nightwatchman’s national anthem. It contains the one line on the record that sums up what the Nightwatchman is trying to say: “If you take a step toward freedom, it’ll take two steps toward you.” That, I think, is the route out. It’s not to compromise or be complacent, it’s that you need to boldly step toward or work toward the world you want to see. And see what comes back.

Switching gears for a moment, Rage Against The Machine is playing shows together again. Will any of the Nightwatchman songs be translated into “Rage-style” songs that Zack could sing and you could play in an amplified way?
No, no, they’re two separate things. I’m doing a Nightwatchman show at Coachella on Saturday, and then Rage plays on Sunday, to use that example.

Should people have hope that Rage will do more than a set of shows together, anything besides both festival things and the Wu-Tang tour? Like maybe record another album together, especially now that Audioslave is done?
Right now there are no plans to do anything beyond the set of shows.

Where do you take The Nightwatchman from here? Do you make another album? Does he do a duets thing with Bruce or Bob or someone else?
Well, right now I have a back catalog of about 50 songs I’m really proud of and happy with, and I’m writing more all the time. I’m touring this summer with it, and I plan on making another album. Having the chutzpah to go from the protection of big, arena-rock bands to standing in front of 20 people at an anarchist bicycle shop in the East Village or 50,000 steel workers in a union rally in Florida being tear-gassed during FTAA protests, this feels like what I should be doing now. It’s not just that the times demand it—it’s that my soul demands it as well.