America Fights
Cross-posted at www.ShantiSalaam.org.
Among our many surprises on the ShantiSalaam tour across South Asia has been the success of American propaganda (and to be fair, the spendthrift habits of Non-Resident Indians and Pakistanis) in cultivating misperceptions about the U.S. For example, in the South Asian psyche, all Americans enjoy both educational privilege and vast wealth; and Americans wholeheartedly support our nation’s despotic and idiotic leadership, offering neither dissent nor resistance to its fascist agenda. I have yet to creatively address the economic myths (which we have at least discussed at length in our workshops), but I aim in this song to explore America’s resignation of the “soft power†identified and championed by Joseph Nye.
America Fights
In the nineteen seventies, my father and my family
came to a new country to see hat we could be if free:
educational opportunities, liberal sensibilities,
T-minus twenty years until a voice from the academy
decided to declare “The end of history.â€
Nineteen-ninety: triumph by the west,
having proven once and for all that we’re the best,
but rather than rest, we pursued another test….
CHORUS: In seventeen-seventy, they said we were free
eighteen-sixty, fought for equality
nineteen-forties, defended democracy
but America fights today building tyranny
Reaching our tentacles into other people’s ventricles,
industrial appetites verging on the non-sensical,
removing mountaintops so we can dig out all the minerals —
But in the end, money is ephemeral.
Our achievements recognized as seminal the world over,
from the Land of Rising Suns to the cliffs of Dover.
Breakfast for all: yellow moons, and green clovers.
Billboards with ads for fancy bras looming over
women with covered heads, men in Hezbollah
sparking cultural warfare, waged in minds and hearts.
CHORUS: In seventeen-seventy, they said we were free
eighteen-sixty, fought for equality
nineteen-forties, defended democracy
but America fights today building tyranny
In the Muslim world, hafizes and Syeds,
having seen their ancient culture was dead,
consumed by the consumerism they themselves had led,
woke up on the other side of the bed
And said “Allah hu akbar†in defense of their culture
black eyes for America in two fallen structures
set upon in the wake by its own elected vultures
And I’m not sure what to do about that,
though I’ve got a few ideas as a matter of fact,
but for now, let’s just witness the scope of the attacks:
Corporate invasion, Abu Ghraib in Iraq;
Gitmo and CIA black sites by the stacks,
each victim tortured, beaten — waterboarding, racks;
And we who supposedly remain “free,â€
Still get incessantly stabbed in the back:
Big Brother hears every call you make,
cameras capture every step you take.
Every breathe you take, freedom further abates
The PATRIOTs Acted, traitors in United States,
fascist forces, leaving sheep in their wake….
CHORUS: In seventeen-seventy, they said we were free
eighteen-sixty, fought for equality
nineteen-forties, defended democracy
but America fights today building tyranny
Peace. There is indeed TRUTH in your observation and bitter irony that a nation and people that once fought so valiantly for their own freedom and the many ” Rights” we now hold sacred should have corrupted their purpose and devolved into an evil like none ever known before on this planet. At the heart of this expanding network of exported violence is simple “greed”. There is a ravenous, cancerous need to have more, control more and pervert the idea of freedom by making it a cause to invade and “rescue” those who don’t know they need to be rescued! With little respect for life( be it human or nonhuman), the earth, the seas or the air we breathe, this “entity” (American military-industrial complex) has chosen to flex its might in the form of violence visited upon other people for the sake of gluttonous industrialists. It is a pattern set long ago when the first slaves were brought to these shores, when indians were given small pox infected blankets, when South American native peoples were annihilated for the sake of precious metals and “doing God’s work”, when old people, women and children were slaughtered at “Wounded Knee”, when eyes were closed to the holocaustic tragedy being perpetrated in South Africa’s system of aparteid, when “conflicts” were staged in Vietnam, Panama, and anywhere else that they decided “Freedom” needed to be exported. And more. If God is able to feel disgust, what must He feel now? Isn’t there an expression that “…absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Take note of the fate of every so called world power ever to exist. There is an inevitability that befell them all. Truly, the meek shall inherit the earth. Peace.