This week Josh Hadley presents a potentially polarizing look at political corruption though the lyrics of former Dead Kenneys frontman Jello Biafra.
We live in a country called the “Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave” but it is actually the land of the corrupt and the home of the bought and paid for. The corruption of both america (it no longer deserves capitalization) itself and of the american spirit (not to mention the american dream) is complete and I bet that not a single one of you noticed past how it effects you on a personal level.
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 fails 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
We like 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 rules. 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?

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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

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

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So much comes in so easy
It’s as though someone wants it there
It would be a little obvious
To fence off all the slums
Hand out machine guns
To the poor in the projects
And watch ’em kill each other off
A more subtle genocide is when
The only hope for the young
Is to join the Army and slowly die
Wall Street or Crack Dealer Avenue
The last roads left to the American Dream

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Just like in Chile or Guatemala
People just seem to disappear
Just like Rome
We fell asleep when we got spoiled
Ignore human rights in the rest of the world
Ya might just lose your own
As the noose of narco-militarism
Tightens ’round your necks
We worry about burning flags
And pee in jars at work
To keep our jobs
But if someone came for you one night
And dragged you away
Do you really think your neighbors
Would even care…
*Inspiration and original words by Jello Biafra (even if he does not know it). My contributions to his work are weak and meaningless in comparison to the power of his original words.
Tell me to shut the fuck up a 1201beyond@gmail.com or contact Alex to fire me at alexjowski@gmail.com