Wasteland of the Free — Iris Dement

#365Songs: December 15th

Living in the wasteland of the free

We’ve got preachers dealing in politics and diamond mines
And their speech is growing increasingly unkind
And they say they are Christ’s disciples
But they don’t look like Jesus to me
It feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

I suppose I’m a registered Democrat, though I’ve always gagged a bit when saying it aloud. I’m far too progressive to fit within a little box. I also don’t love binaries, this or that. When forced to be one thing or the other thing, I’d rather say, “I’m not THAT” instead of “I’m THIS.” As a result, I’m a registered Democrat because I’m most definitely not a Republican.

But goddamn it’s difficult. The posturing, the virtue signaling, the hypocrisy.

I liked Obama, the way he speaks and the world he portrays. He ran with progressive energy only to govern as a moderate. We easily forget that he was quite conservative on gay rights, despite progress occurring during his Presidency, and his “big fucking deal” health care reform did nothing to remove the large, profitable elephant from the room.

Politics gets blurry when you consider all the interest groups, the corrupt campaign finance laws, all those billionaires, corporations, and donors who accept a return on investment. And that’s before you consider the ways in which our politicians govern for their own self interest.

Democrats have canonized Nancy Pelosi, but why? Other than being a groundbreaker, which I too celebrate, she’s failed time and again to get with the times. And besides, how can we expect her to reform the banking industry when she’s accumulated over $240m trading stocks through insider information?

A few weeks ago, she filed her papers to run again when she’s 86.

We got politicians running races on corporate cash
Now don’t tell me they don’t turn around and kiss them peoples’ ass
You may call me old-fashioned
But that don’t fit my picture of a true democracy
And it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Wisdom often comes with age, and in some cases quality too. But that’s not true in politics. That’s why it’s time to burn it down. Consider the famous Winston Churchill quote: “If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart, and if you are not a conservative when old, you have no brain.” There’s no other way to translate that nonsense other than, “when you’re young, look out for others; when you’re old, look out for yourself.”

And let’s be honest here, that’s exactly what our politicians do. And Democrats love to lash out at the Republicans lack of values even as they throw around meaningless virtue signals, even as they do the exact opposite of what they preach.

Burn it down. Start over. That’s what the Republicans did, after all. Trump stands for nothing, and speaks whatever incoherent nonsense gets a rise out of the audience. He listened to his base of uneducated, unhappy bigoted voters and told them exactly what they want to hear — and it doesn’t matter if he does it or not, because there’s a whole sea of Democrats behaving so poorly that he can just blame them when it doesn’t happen. The Republicans didn’t want Trump, but they accepted him when they knew it was the only way to win. Democrats would never do that, and it’s also why we don’t win when it matters most.

Y’all, this shit is too simple.
You can’t be the party of the people if you don’t govern for the people.
You can’t be the party of progress if you sit back as rights are removed.
You can’t be the party of the young when your leaders are in their 80s.

The only reason the Republicans can do it is because they’re smarter than we are, they costume-up as self-righteous Christians and pretend to worship alongside them.

It’s easy to steal the silverware when you’re invited to the dinner party.

The average age of Congress is 58. Our outgoing President is 82, our incoming Fascist is 78. And absolutely none of them care about the future beyond their last breath, which blows faster towards them each day. So they accumulate as much wealth as they can to hand down, not spread out. Our self-righteous puppets do that, too, no matter how much they guffaw at the camera and pretend otherwise.

Go away, Schumer.
You too, Pelosi.
Bye bye Biden.
Love you Bernie, but your time has passed.
Bon voyage, Clinton family.
And while we’re at it, let’s send off all the other lifers who have been indoctrinated by their elders.

We lost the Supreme Court, and basic rights that took generations to win, because Ruth Bader Ginsburg destroyed her legacy by sticking around a day too long. We lost this election because an angry old man felt it was still his turn.

GO AWAY. All of you.

We got CEO’s making two hundred times the workers’ pay
But they’ll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage
If you don’t like it, mister, they’ll ship your job
To some third-world country across the sea
And it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

And now, we get what we deserve. A more aggressive Kleptocracy, and that’s the best case scenario. The old guard Democrats lost touch, refused to step aside, and as a result sent us to the brink of Fascism. No, friends, I’m sorry, it wasn’t her emails, it was her. It was her shitty campaign that called key voters “deplorables,” and even if they are (read: they are), you don’t say that towards the same swing states you refuse to campaign within. And while post-pandemic rage, global inflation, and algorithmically-fueled conspiracy theories didn’t help our cause, we didn’t lose because of that this time. We lost because our politicians are too old, too wealthy, too out of touch with what people really need.

With all due respect to Kamala, who mostly ran a decent campaign in an un-winnable scenario, she, too, failed to hear the youngest voters whose futures would be more impacted than her own. She brushed aside the Gaza genocide too many times and ran in fear of offending Biden at the expense of the change voters demand.

It didn’t have to go this way, but it did, and now there’s no turning back. The country is on fire, and our selfish, old ass Democrat leaders are too busy buying stocks and fanning their own egos. Whatever happens next, no matter how bad it gets, and it will get real bad, the ones who started the fire won’t be the ones who burn. So the least they can do for the next four years is shut the fuck up, step aside, and usher in a new generation of voices.

Living in the wasteland of the free
Where the poor have now become the enemy
‘Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones’
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

~

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