Is This the Life We Really Want?

The goose has gotten fat
On caviar and fancy bars
And subprime loans
And broken homes
Is this the life, the holy grail?
It’s not enough that we succeed
We still need others to fail
Fear, fear drives the mills of modern man
Fear keeps us all in line
Fear of all those foreigners
Fear of all their crimes
Is this the life we really want?
It surely must be so
For this is a democracy and what we all say goes
And every time a student is run over by a tank
And every time a pirate’s dog is forced to walk the plank
Every time a Russian bride is advertised for sale
And every time a journalist is left to rot in jail
Every time a young girl’s life is casually spent
And every time a nincompoop becomes the president
Every time somebody dies reaching for their keys
And every time that Greenland falls in the fucking sea it’s because
All of us, the blacks and whites
Chicanos, Asians — every type of ethnic group
Even folks from Guadaloupe, the old, the young
Toothless hags, supermodels, actors, fags, bleeding hearts
Football stars, men in bars, washer women, tailors, tarts
Grannies, grandpas, uncles, aunts
Friends, relations, homeless tramps
Clerics, truckers, cleaning ladies, ants
Maybe not ants
Why not ants?
Well, because it’s true
The ants don’t have enough IQ to differentiate between
The pain that other people feel
And well, for instance, cutting leaves
Or crawling across window sills
In search of open treacle tins
So like the ants, are we just dumb?
Is that why we don’t feel or see
Or are we all just numbed out on reality TV?
So every time
The curtain falls
Every time the curtain falls on some forgotten life
It is because we all stood by silent and indifferent
It’s normal!