I'm sure I will watch this month, maybe a night this week or next weekend - been meaning to.
I listened to Debbie's rendition. Yes haunting in the beginning. Back in my music school days we called that a re-harm - or reharmonizaation, in fact I THINK we might have had an entire class on it or at least a section ... maybe it was an arrangement class. You take the melody either exactly or slightly modified (because you might have to) ... and slap it into another key or mode or at least a different set of chords.
This one teeters on wanting to be minor (starts in one of the minor modes - vague and saddish!) but is purposefully vague ... never fully lands but threatens to ... into minor ... then does a bunch of key modulations which also never land - hard to call them modulations, probably there is a name for that which I've just forgotten, or maybe you just call it 'a bunch of V7s. The Minor suggests the threat and what would be lost if this shite continues, the modulations and never landing suggest the teetering that the US is doing right now ... on the brink of disaster quite frankly but from our perspective more of a death than disaster, although both.
Then it restarts normally. Very well done whoever wrote it. I'm ASSUMING that was the intended effect.
Nice interpretation! I never thought it was trying to capture the mood of patriots. Sounds just about right! Glad it brought out the creative — and introspective — in the owl :-)