.jpg)
I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will live as one."
- John Lennon -
In the wake of yesterday's significant election results, over the next day or two there will be an overabundance of interpreters and commentators. I will not be one of them. I will reserve making specific comment for a few days, until I have had time to fully absorb and ponder all that has just transpired.
Meanwhile, I will simply offer my initial gut reaction in verse. This is a piece inspired by, patterned after, and to which I offer my humble apologies: John Lennon's 1970 effort that he called "God." Like that effort of 40 years ago, it is a wistful and angry observation and accounting of a personal set of beliefs. I call it "Government." GOVERNMENT
Government is a concept
by which we mete out and measure our pain.
I'll say it again:
Government's a concept
by which we mete out and measure our pain.
I don't believe in Wall Street.
I don't believe in Nafta.
I don't believe in Bank of America.
I don't believe in Gates.
I don't believe in Friedman.
I don't believe in Pfizer.
I don't believe in Cargill.
I don't believe in WellPoint.
I don't believe in Adam Smith.
I don't believe in Romney.
I don't believe in Bernanke.
I don't believe in Lenin.
I don't believe in the Pentagon.
I don't believe in Reagan.
I don't believe in Palin.
I just believe in me;
you and me,
and that's reality.
The dream is over -
lasted 200 years plus.
I was a dreamer,
but now I've woken up.
I was an Obamaist,
but now I'm a dissident.
And so, dear friends,
we'll just have to carry on.
The dream is over...
The dream ISN'T really over, folks. At the moment, it just seems that way. But like the dream for freedom from tyranny Russian dissidents Alexander Solzhenitzen and Andrei Sakharov once shared, the dream for economic justice the Pullman strikers of 1894 and Cesar Chavez and migrant workers of the 1960s shared, and the dream for individual dignity and civil rights that 1960s activists Rosa Parks and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King shared, we current progressives, too, must lick our wounds and carry on. Like them, we must unceasingly continue to battle for a government truly of, for, and by the people rather than one strictly for the benefit of repressive social conservatives and the wealthy. Like them, we must NEVER lose hope or abandon our dream and continue to fight for social and economic fairness and justice. And, like pre-Civil War slaves and all of those already mentioned, with each scourage inflicted on us we must strengthen our resolve and determination to overcome temporary setbacks and continue to press strongly for the sensibility and justice which MUST and eventually WILL prevail!
