Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you.
Republicans have a Tambourine Man. His name is Limbaugh. He's a psychopath, but that doesn't bother Republicans, they admire psychopaths. Democrats have a Tambourine Man. His name is Obama. He panders to psychopaths every chance he gets, but that doesn't bother Democrats, pandering to psychopaths is what they do. They call it Centrism.
I remember Election Night 2008, I remember the hope so many progressives had that evening, but that evening's empire of hope has turned into sand, vanished from our hands, left us blindly here to stand but still not sleeping. Who can sleep? Who can sleep when war crimes won't be prosecuted, when Gitmo won't be closed, when there'll be no withdrawal from Iraq, when the war in Afghanistan will go on and on and on, when we're all on a one way trip on Wall Street's magic swirling ship, when our senses have all been stripped, when our hands can't feel to grip, when our feet are too numb to step, when there's nothing left to do but watch the boot heels of Karma grind what's left of this country into dust.
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet. I have no one to meet, and this ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming . . .
Independence Hall is just a relic from America's forgotten past. Democracy is gone, it's vanished into the foggy ruins of time. |
| It didn't have to be this way. America had a Tambourine Man once, a Tambourine Man worth following . . .
He played a song for us, he played a song for the whole world. But no one sings that song anymore, no one can remember the words. They can't remember much of anything, they can't remember what's real and what's not, they can't even remember what happened yesterday, it's already vanished into the foggy ruins of time.
They turn on their TV's every jingle jangle morning, and what do they see? 200 channels of unreality, that's what they see. They hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme, they see laughing, spinning, swinging madly across the sun, but it's not aimed at anyone, it's just escaping on the run.
There's a Tambourine Man on every channel . . .
They're just ragged clowns, no one should pay them any mind, it's just a shadow they're seeing that they're chasing. But tens of millions of Americans watch them anyway, they're ready to go anywhere, they're ready for to fade, into their own parade, they're under the dancing spell of every Tambourine Man with unreality to sell and a channel to sell it on. All memory and fate have been driven deep beneath the waves, they've gone disappearing, through the smoke rings of what's left of America's mind.
Evening's empire of hope has turned into sand, it's vanished from my hand, left me blindly here to stand, but still not sleeping. So play a song for me, Wild Wild Left, play a song for everyone, play the good ones, play the best ones so they don't vanish too. Play them, keep playing them, because there's a diamond sky somewhere, a real one. Play those songs, keep playing them, and maybe someday we'll dance beneath that diamond sky, with one hand waving free, maybe someday all the songs will be good ones, maybe someday everyone will sing along and these dark days will be forgotten, maybe someday, deceit and injustice and war will vanish into the foggy ruins of time, they'll be what's forgotten, they'll be gone for good and no one will even know what they were.
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