My War, My Revolution

It's nice to know what you want to be when you grow up. I've never had a calling. Well, I mean I've done a lot of things. I've managed offices and I've worked for the government. I was a bartender for one night and I've scooped mud from the bottom of barges. When those smug guys at the yacht club ask, "What do you do?," I seldom answer truthfully. I almost never tell them that I write songs and struggle to save my soul. 

Oh, I'm not ashamed of it. I was born to the rock'n'roll. That's that. It's the detail that would end conversation. Once I got around to explaining that I want to help save the world that I know that throats would clear and Top-Siders would shuffle.

Now, however, let's slow-forward to my new business plan. This little, insignificant spec in the universe, Martin Shrekli, has changed everything. His scheme to raise the market price on a sixty two year old drug by some 5000% has awakened a bigger chunk of our culture than anything since the Occupy Wall Street movement. The punk, in a storm of bad timing, made headlines just as Pope Francis was arriving on our shore.

This is my war now. This is our war. I believe to call it a revolution is to violate the fourteenth amendment. Oh well. There won't be any weapons in this revolution, no arms in this war. Our side will fight with truth and with love.

E.O. Wilson, the father of sociobiology, points out that we have the resources to provide for everyone. Not only that but we posses the power and technology to heal this planet and to nourish it. There is no reason for babies to wash up on shores. There is no justification for polar bears to starve.

There are no hedge fund managers who go the the office every morning to make the world a better place. Well, I suppose that the penthouse on the upper east side might make their world a better place. You know what I'm saying.

No fresh-scrubbed graduate goes into pharmaceutical sales to benefit mankind. They want that new Bimmer. The big one.

Why do we put heroin dealers in prison and pay fortunes to arms dealers? Why isn't it shameful to sell products around the world that are manufactured to kill and maim and destroy?

You do realize that the answer to my rhetorical question from any of these lunatics from the military industrial complex is that if we don't, China will. Russia will. We justify our means with double-talk, gobbledygook. 

These crooks own our government and most other governments, too. There. The emperor has no clothes.

We have the means to feed and shelter everyone. We possess the technology to provide clean energy. We have enough land to protect all of nature's creatures. We have the medical facilities to heal and comfort the ones who need it and the ability to care for the ones who can't take care of themselves. There are teachers and technology to make quality education available to every member of society.

This joke that we refer to in this country as "politics" has run its course. We have Donald Trump to thank for pointing this out. He's Pat Paulsen on steroids with a bad hairdo and a bankroll to choke a horse.

Charles Koch doesn't need another mill. Mick Jagger doesn't need another villa. Not until there are no hungry children at night.

Tribal politics are over. Quote me. This war may take awhile but love is all you need.