“Don?t you know
They?re talkin? bout a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Don?t you knowThey?re talkin? about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
While they?re standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion…”
Over the past months and years I’ve been getting more and more annoyed at the American so-called Democrats, as the country slides towards barbarity and disaster.
Here they are, in the world’s richest, most educated nation, created on the revolutionary principles of the Enlightenment as a bulwark against monarchical tyrants and theocratic dictators, and with explicit, even admonitory permissiion from the ruling constitution to kick any such tyrant out, by force if necessary.
Now, because of their sleepwalking into tyranny there’s a dictator in the White House. Supreme court justices, scientists, generals, top civil servants, scholars – all the great and good have warned against Bush and the rise of fascism but still, the Democrats, they do fuck all.
America, with its guarantee of liberty and justice for all, was the world’s great hopeful experiment, a chance to form a nation that from the start was committed to the equality of all people. The migrants that founded it had guts and were willing to stand and fight, and even die for an idea. They were hardly saints – they comitted genocide against the indigenous peoples of the country – but they had courage and determination and over the next centuries built a great nation, for all its flaws.
When the rest of the world heard people like Franklin D Roosevelt speak, America was the place they wanted to be. America was the promised land.
“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want — which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor– anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception — the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change — in a perpetual peaceful revolution — a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions — without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.
This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.
To that high concept there can be no end save victory.
America is not the promised land. Not any more. America has become a byword for torture, illegality, brutality, and greed. Rooosevelt’s words seem like so much false advertising now. It’ll take more than fine words to wipe out the stain of Abu Ghraib and Baghram. We’ve seen the video.
But there’s still a chance to change . US State legislatures, whose members are sworn to support the Constitution, may refuse assistance, aid or cooperation if they regard an act as unconstitutional, and so could state officials. The Republicans may control both houses of congress, but they don’t have all the states, not yet, and last time I looked individuals still have free will. If not now, then when? If not you, who?
Oh, what I am I talking about. Pipe dreams. Not going to happen. If blatant bribery, corruption, warmongering, ballot-rigging, gerrymandering, greed, racism, sexism, incompetence, wrecking the environment, dismantling government and public health, robbing the treasury, looting and pillaging overseas, and last but not least, spying on and torturing its own citizens – if that isn’t enough to make the populace revolt, what the hell is?
And now the strutting bantam of a Bush, whom you could get rid of if you chose , is putting the rest of the world in jeopardy by goading Iran’s crazy minority government into nuclear war.
And still the Democrats sit on their hands and talk about ‘timing’ and ‘tactics’, code for ‘We’ve got ours, thanks. Fuck off, plebes.”‘. Many Democrats are so compromised themselves, financially – or otherwise – that they might as well be Republicans. The government only needs to hold the threat of wiretapped secrets over their heads for them to roll over for any administration outrage at all. There are those called Democrats who are Republicans. Think Leiberman. Those who are not dirty in some way are weak, or blindly self-interested like Hillary Clinton.
If the Democrats carry on like this, a couple of years down the line this will seem like so much fiddling while Rome, and the rest of the world, burned. The mass of ordinary Americans don’t have time for politics, the free market system has made sure of that. Those who they rely on to represent them have betrayed their trust. It’s up to the individuals now. There are those who’re building for the long term. The trouble is, there may be no long-term the way things are going.
But hey, why worry, someone will deal with it. And Walmart is hiring.
Lyrics by Tracy Chapman.
