Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The Soundtrack of #Occupy (from 1980)

Seeing tear-gas clouds in Oakland last night put the voice of Joe Strummer in my head.
"They put up a poster saying we earn more than you!
When we're working for the clampdown
We will teach our twisted speech
To the young believers
We will train our blue-eyed men
To be young believers"
--The Clash, "Clampdown"


Some, like Rick Perry and his ilk in the quote we offered yesterday, would have you believe that your liberal idealism is a youthful folly you will grow out of.
"But, you grow up and you calm down and
You're working for the clampdown
You start wearing the blue and brown and
You're working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now"

It doesn't have to be that way. We can take our youthful idealism and adapt it to the world of the Vietnam War, or No Nukes demonstrations (Clampdown was from the era of Three Mile Island and is mentioned at the end of the song), or our criminal invasion of Iraq, or against the excesses of rapacious capitalism. Just as long as you're not working for the clampdown.

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