We Listened

but yeah, we listened talk radio
where people are stuck in their cars
every day on their commute
home from work
where people could call in and agree
with whatever was spouting out at them
over the radio waves

where’s the gratification
when you can’t talk to rap stars
or have your voice heard on MTV
and you can’t be broadcasted on the radio
where everyone stroke your ego
and agrees with you completely

yeah, we’ve tried to listen
but we’ve been bombarded with
war images in the tee vee
and you know, congress
hasn’t declared a war
since world war two
but we can still blow people up,
can’t we?
cause our view is getting clouded
because now we can see for ourselves
that war is so gory,
that war is bad
and we’ve got those images in our heads
and we hear quote unquote news
from every source under the sun
some reliable, some not
i mean, we’ve got cable news,
we’ve got the internet
and you know, some of the
reputable news sources
even give us slanted information
who are we to trust now?

well, we listened
but most of us mustn’t have known
what we were listening to
when you idolize a rock star
and they tell you what to do
wouldn’t you just follow?
and when you get your voice on the radio
to talk someone you’ve grown to idolize
and you’re busy
stroking each others egos
wouldn’t you do whatever they said?
yeah, most us didn’t know
how to decipher the jargon
thrown at us
but we soaked it all in anyway
and spit it out as our new mantra

maybe we all just followed blindly
after listening to one side of the story
over and over again
without getting all the facts
it was like we were told
to jump in a pool, that we’d like it
and we all just ran to the pool and jumped
without looking to see if
there was any water in the pool

but looking back, after we’ve chosen
we’ve got a more ethnically mixed leadership,
but we’re ignoring some of our problems
to help others
people pull some of our rights away
to help us somewhere else

but you know, i’m trying to remember
what ben franklin said
that people who give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither

so i guess,
thanks to our choices,
people are taking some of our
essential liberties
and do we feel
temporarily
more safe?
And does that mean that we deserve either?
because i can tell you,
i don’t feel more safe
and i sure the hell don’t feel more free
and i see that pool up ahead
that everyone’s just rushing to
but i can’t see any water in there
and i’m trying to stop
this mob rush
as everyone is jumping in without looking

the way jews were forced in mass
to run
and they’d see they were running
to the edge of a cliff
but the ss was behind them
and they had to keep running

and the ss’d shoot them as they were
about to run over the edge
so they’d fall to their deaths

i see this, i see the mass grave
in the bottom of that swimming pool
and we listen to our leaders
as they tell us to jump in