Cohen sings like a man dictating his own eulogy and finding it funny. "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." You can build a theology on that line, and people have, but the song earns it, five minutes of climbing toward something that might be faith or might be resignation wearing faith's clothes. Democracy is a love letter to a country written by someone who will never belong to it. The whole album is dark and prophetic and strangely comforting, the way only someone who has already accepted the worst can be comforting.