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| Songwriter Bruce Cockburn. |
Like politics and life in general, music is all about transitions. Watch the one in this song as "Call It Democracy" (from the 1986 "World of Wonders" CD) slides into "If I Had A Rocket Launcher" (from the 1984 album, "Stealing Fire"). This mini-performance may be the greatest lyrical and musical protest of our time. "Call It Democracy" is a brilliant indictment of the status quo irrespective of its lapses into sloganeering, second only to Day 8's "Burn, [Baby, Burn]" by the same author.
Lyrics to "Call It Democracy":
Padded with power here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poor
Who rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity
By turning countries into labor camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom
Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so called "developed" nations'
Idolatry of ideology
North, south, east, And it west
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery
I-M-F dirty M-F
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
See the paid off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies, shake hands with the fellows
And it's open for business like a cheap bordello
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
See the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution
I-M-F dirty M-F
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
Lyrics to "If I Had A Rocket Launcher":
Here comes the helicopter -- second time today
Everybody scatters and hopes it goes away
How many kids they've murdered only God can say
If I had a rocket launcher...I'd make somebody pay
I don't believe in guarded borders and I don't believe in hate
I don't believe in generals or their stinking torture states
And when I talk with the survivors of things too sickening to relate
If I had a rocket launcher...I would retaliate
On the Rio Lacantun, one hundred thousand wait
To fall down from starvation -- or some less humane fate
Cry for guatemala, with a corpse in every gate
If I had a rocket launcher...I would not hesitate
I want to raise every voice -- at least I've got to try
Every time I think about it water rises to my eyes.
Situation desperate, echoes of the victims cry
If I had a rocket launcher...Some son of a bitch would die
