So Far Away From Home

(noon – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

Many’s the time we’ve been mistaken, and many times confused.

Yes, and we’ve often felt forsaken, and certainly misused.

Obama says it’s all right, it’s all right, but I’m weary to my bones.

On this Independence Day, on this 4th of July 2009,

America’s so far away from home,

So far away from home.

Our government tortured people to death, our government spies on us, our government hands trillions of tax dollars to Wall Street criminals.  As a professor, Barack Obama taught Constitutional law.  As President, he betrays the Constitution and calls it looking forward.  He consults with RePug lunatics and calls it bipartisanship.  He takes one step towards change, two steps back, and calls it progress.              

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered,

Don’t have a friend who feels at ease,

Don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered,

Or driven to its knees.

But the Dream of the Proud is still standing, it’s still casting its shadow over this country.  It’s the belief in American exceptionalism, it’s the absolute assurance most Americans have that we possess inherent moral superiority, it’s the unwavering conviction that we are a special nation blessed by God and destined for greatness. It’s been called Manifest Destiny, it’s been called the American Way, it’s been called the Project for the New American Century.

It’s a misguided, self-indulgent Dream.  It triggered America’s invasion of Canada in 1813, it triggered America’s attack on Mexico in 1845, it triggered America’s genocidal conquest of Naïve Americans, it triggered our seizure of Cuba and the Philippines from Spain in 1898, it triggered murderous American alliances with 20th Century tyrants whose names are synonymous with evil–Batista, Somoza, Suharto, Pinochet, Marcos, the Shah of Iran.  

America had a chance to wake up from the Dream of the Proud a generation ago, but it turned away from President Carter.  He tried to wake us up, he tried to end our addiction to foreign oil, he offered rational solutions to our problems, but Americans didn’t want rational solutions, they wanted to go on dreaming the Dream of the Proud.

So America handed the White House to a dipshit movie actor who told Americans what they wanted to hear.  He blamed all of America’s problems on welfare queens in Cadillacs, on liberal tax-and-spenders, on labor unions and activist judges and big government.  He said it was Morning in America. But it wasn’t Morning in America, it was Evening in America, with Midnight coming fast and 30 years of darkness heading our way right behind it.

On rare occasions when Americans think of the road we’ve traveled on,

They wonder what’s gone wrong,

They look at each other,

and wonder what’s gone wrong.

The Dream of the Proud has been incorporated and privatized, marketed and militarized, that’s what’s gone wrong. It pervades American society and culture, it’s the foundation of foreign and domestic policy in Washington, so we’re trapped in it.  The Dream of the Proud has yet to end, it may never end, it’s manifested in NAFTA, in CAFTA, in SOFA.  It’s pervasive in the news and entertainment programming of NBC, CBS, and ABC, it’s the soma of the corporate plutocracy’s Brave New World, Americans cannot escape from it, our politics is immersed in it, our politicians live and breathe it.  

And I dreamed I was flying,

And high up above,

My eyes could clearly see,

The Statue of Liberty,

Sailing away to sea.

Where on distant shores, America has inflicted injustice, misery and death on the poor and the powerless from Nicaragua to Najaf.  Most Americans will never admit their responsibility, they still haven’t awakened from that dangerous Dream.  RePugs haven’t.  They live in an imaginary world where America is always above reproach, where whoever we wage war against is evil incarnate.  

We’re reaping the consequences of that Dream of the Proud, we’re reaping every one of those consequences, we’re up to our necks in that reaping and the reaping won’t be over anytime soon.

Progressives have always seen the Dream of the Proud for what it is–dangerous self-indulgence, a cultural paradigm that empowers exploitation and global hegemony, a foreign and domestic agenda of corporate greed that exploits the poor and the powerless in the name of profit.  

But we haven’t been able to awaken America from that Dream, America is still chasing the Holy Grail of Empire, it’s still filled with hypocrites who claim this is a Christian nation, who don’t want to look at the innocent blood on their hands, who rip the Sermon on the Mount to shreds all week and then go to church on Sunday, who keep electing Judases to political office and then wonder why this country is Hell bound with the hammer down.

Obama says it’s all right, it’s all right,

But I’m weary to my bones.

On this Independence Day, on this 4th of July 2009,

America’s still so far away from home,

So far away from home.