...we buy everything from youth to religion and, at the same time, we buy our wars.
Jackson Browne wrote the song Lives in the Balance in 1986, at the time of the Ronald Raygun's (sic) covert war in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair. The times were different, the cause was different, the people and countries involved were different, the political scene in the US was different, but many of the actions surrounding the current proposed action in Syria come out of the same playbook - a big advertising campaign based on fear, loathing, and arguable truths. The song is relevant again (or still). Most importantly, there are...lives in the balance.
The real lyrics are "They sell us the President the same way they sell us our clothes and our cars ..." but I have long thought that missed a bit of the tragedy: the American people bought Raygun's lies.
I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war
And there's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs
On the radio talk shows and the t.v.
You hear one thing again and again
How the USA stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire
There's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can't even say the names
They sell us the president the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they're never the ones to fight or to die
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire
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