@lordmelton is dead right, though it’s obscure knowledge for those on here below about 50, and/ or those in the USA. The comments above about the dangers of pessimism, or perhaps cynicism, will ring a bell for those who have followed Mr. waters and his more recent diversions.
FWIW - and feel free to shoot me down if any of this looks irrelevant or uncalled for…
Animals is imho a great album with pithy and poignant lyrics, but it is worth remembering the context of its creation.
As for the US-specific comments above, I feel unqualified or poorly qualified to comment by comparison with most here for obvious reasons - I have lived most of my life within a few miles of the site on the album cover.
Over here, we have much less chance of being shot, especially in schools or by the police, more chance of free healthcare doing the job, slightly less obvious success for the extremes of corporate greed and other ills discussed on Animals, a lot less impinging of self-righteous zealotry and in particular supposedly religious extremism on mainstream life.
However, most of the ills mentioned above by those in the USA about their home are pretty universal and permanent. I’d argue that noticing them about the USA probably shows that that is where you are, so it’s about you as well as the country. In much the same way, noticing the current parlous state of the world/ society usually tells the rest of us a little about said state and more about the age and reading habits of the speaker.
As for musicians successfully commenting on the ills of the world, we should give an honourable mention surely to your own Gil Scott-Heron. His dad may have been a footballer for Celtic in Glasgow, but GSH (among others of course) explained to a lot of the rest of the world some of the things about the USA at the time that we just didn’t see on TV. And doing so may have contributed to his being about as cheerful in later life as Roger Waters.