Damien Katz

"Stars And Stripes Of Corruption"

Dead Kennedys

Finally got to Washington in the middle of the night
I couldn't wait
I headed straight for the Capitol Mall
My heart began to pound
Yahoo! It really exists
The American International Pictures logo

I looked up at that Capitol Building
Couldn't help but wonder why
I felt like saying "Hello, old friend"

Walked up the hill to touch it
Then I unzipped my pants
And pissed on it when nobody was looking

Like a great eternal Klansman
With his two flashing red eyes
Turn around he's always watching
The Washington monument pricks the sky
With flags like pubic hair ringed 'round the bottom

The symbols of our heritage
Lit up proudly in the night
Somehow fits to see the homeless people
Passed out on the lawn

So this is where it happens
The power games and bribes
All lobbying for a piece of ass

Of the stars and stripes of corruption
Makes me feel so ashamed
To be an American
When we're too stuck up to learn from our mistakes
Trying to start another Viet Nam
While fiddling while Rome burns at home
The Boss says, "You're laid off. Blame the Japanese"
"America's back," alright
At the game it plays the worst
Strip mining the world like a slave plantation

No wonder others hate us
And the Hitlers we handpick
To bleed their people dry
For our evil empire

The drug we're fed
To make us like it
Is God and country with a band

People we know who should know better
Howl, "America riles. Let's go to war!"
Business scams are what's worth dying for

Are the Soviets our worst enemy?
We're destroying ourselves instead
Who cares about our civil rights
As long as I get paid?

The blind Me-Generation
Doesn't care if life's a lie

so easily used, so proud to enforce

The stars and stripes of corruption
Let's bring it all down!
Tell me who's the real patriots
The Archie Bunker slobs waving flags?
Or the people with the guts to work
For some real change
Rednecks and bombs don't make us strong
We loot the world, yet we can't even feed ourselves
Our real test of strength is caring
Not the toys of war we sell the world
Just carry on, thankful to be farmed like worms
Old glory for a blanket
As you suck on your thumbs

Real freedom scares you
'Cos it means responsibility

So you chicken out and threaten me

Saying, "Love it or leave it"
I'll get beat up if I criticize it
You say you'll fight to the death
To save your worthless flag

If you want a banana republic that bad
Why don't you go move to one
But what can just one of us do?
Against all that money and power
Trying to crush us into roaches?

We don't destroy society in a day
Until we change ourselves first
From the inside out

We can start by not lying so much
And treating other people like dirt
It's easy not to base our lives
On how much we can scam

And you know
It feels good to lift that monkey off our backs

I'm thankful I live in a place
Where I can say the things I do
Without being taken out and shot
So I'm on guard against the goons
Trying to take my rights away
We've got to rise above the need for cops and laws

Let kids learn communication
Instead of schools pushing competition
How about more art and theater instead of sports?

People will always do drugs
Let's legalize them
Crime drops when the mob can't price them
Budget's in the red?
Let's tax religion

No one will do it for us
We'll just have to fix ourselves
Honesty ain't all that hard
Just put Rambo back inside your pants
Causing trouble for the system is much more fun

Thank you for the toilet paper
But your flag is meaningless to me
Look around, we're all people
Who needs countries anyway?

Our land, I love it too
I think I love it more than you
I care enough to fight

The stars and stripes of corruption
Let's bring it all down!
If we don't try
If we just lie
If we can't find
A way to do it better than this
Who will?

Great song, Ronnie. Very apt. You know what I think is wrong with this country? Baby boomers. Not that they're really any worse than any other generation that got to be their age, but there are just so many more of them that it's swaying politics towards the right... and when you can't be drafted, it's not as hard to send our troops to war. And when you're old and rich and white, it's easy to blame drugs, sex, TV, and video games for all the violence and crime.

Nevermind that it's really the loss of jobs requiring unskilled labor that's putting so many of the uneducated out of work. Try getting a job without a college degree. Go for it. I dare you. Hell, I know plenty of people *with* college degrees who have trouble finding jobs. If you don't have a degree in business or some kind of science, you're screwed. The Bachelor of Arts degree is the new high school diploma.

With the advent of a technological world, machines are taking over many of the jobs these unskilled people had 40 years ago. So now what? We need more money for education, so that we have fewer unskilled workers. That's all there is to it. Don't put the money into elaborate plans only an evil genius could think up... do what every other business does when it wants to improve the quality of its output - put the money in to the workers, in this case, the teachers. Teachers are paid a pittance for the incredibly vital job they have. It's insane. We pay doctors $200,000 a year, but the people who teach those doctors biology? $40,000.

"...I guess that's the time when I'm not depressed,
But I'm still depressed, and I ask what's it worth?
Ready to give up so I seek the Old Earth
Who explained working hard may help you maintain
to learn to overcome the heartaches and pain..."

Nate, doctors are more important and "incredibly vital" to society than teachers are. Although I'd have to agree that investing in education itself is a great start.

I am with you on the Boomers.
Both Left and Right, I have never heard of a more self-righteous group of people. They have become the very thing they are so very, very proud of standing up against in the 60's. Then they left my generation to be the first generation to have a lower expected standard of living than the previous. So let them squawk. We have work to do.

sigh...The problem with youth is that it is wasted on the young...

You guys not no gripe against baby boomers. Your gripe is with the folks in power. Don't get me wrong, disaffected youth is by and large, a good thing, but at least smarten up a little.

Nate, it was the baby boomers who were subjected to a draft, not you punks. Sheesh!

I too, find the political shift to the right worrisome. It has nothing to do with age, in my opinion. I believe the religious fundamentalists are to blame for this...

Ronnie, maybe you shouldn't expect a certain standard of living. Maybe you, like myself, should go out and earn your standard of living.

When the baby boomers were confronted with a war they could not support, they went out and changed the course of US policy. The only social activist I am aware of who is actively striving to change US policy in Iraq is a mother who lost her child. Correct me if I am wrong but that probably makes her a baby boomer, eh?

Boomers r teh suck. X'ers rule!!!!

Hmmm, my previous comment was a little harsh. Not all boomers r teh suck, and not all X'ers rule.

I find the whole thing of blaming boomers for our problems silly. The boomers also inherited a bunch problems from previous generations (and a bunch of them complained really loudly about it too). Some of those things got much better, some much worse. But I'm of the opinion that the problems facing us right aren't any worse than the problems we faced in the 60's and 70's, and as whole I'll take our problems over theirs.

Oh yeah I forgot that "tongue-in-cheeck" don't work so good in writing.

We'll still pay the Social Security tax.

Peace, Love, Dope!