8o's legacy (happy Independence)

Don't blame the GWB administration, it was Reagan and his merry crew.
Though we protested in the post-Vietnam 70's 
hot and sure about every error 
the point is, we had that luxury. Yes, there was hardship, 
discrimination, 
individual need; but really no one need go hungry 
for lack of a job, there was real community 
spirit, especially on the lower rungs, but philanthropy as well. 
There was a strong foundation that made sense 
and could be reasoned with. 
The 80's brought in a different worldview, 
more wide and wild. Days of cocaine, 
champagne, glamour and celebration for sweet deregulation, 
when every dreamer 
could believe the capitalist vision of wealth unbound. 
Before it was found that 
poisonous as plutonium in the gleeful arms of the truly greedy, 
just what we 
were free to become. 
Since then it's been spinning our balance to bits of 
blast-warped brains. 
Such unbridled hatred and spitting disdain. Psychic 
Cassandras said at the time, his numbers are 666. 
A man possessed by 
Hollywood fantasies of what we all should be, 
folie a deux with the nation. 
And here are those snowy yesteryears roosting 
in our rafters, laying out 
the macabre future of their disaffected dreams. 
Who are we, really? 
Distanced from our history, 
believing convenient lies, what are our chances 
for recovery?

 

July 4, 2010