It’s Alright, Ma might be one of the most cynical yet brutally honest songs about the vagaries, contradictions and confusing aspects of American politics, consumerist culture and economy. It’s a very sobering song, too because Dylan was as much critical of the emerging, nascent “counterculture” as he was of mainstream American society, MIC. It also reveals a lot about a part of human nature where pessimists, cynics like to intellectually degrade, castigate people to feel as bad and hopeless as they are.