Iris DeMent :: Wasteland of the Free

 

From the album: The Way I Should, released in 1996. 

A national anthem for now. 

And yet this was written before 9-11, before the invasion of Iraq, before Mike Huckabee flew to the Caymans after telling us that we needed to change the Constitution to fit the Southern Baptist convention, before John McCain put Charlie Black in charge of his campaign for President, before I sent my son to inner city Philadelphia to teach 6th graders how to read, before the incarcerated population of this country had clicked past two million, and before my daughter went to work in the homicide division of the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington, D.C.

And, of course, it was written decades before Donald Fucking Trump and his clown car of fraud, insurrection, racism, whores, and grift came to Washington.

This is as patriotic a song as you can get, because it says we can do better. 

It reminds us that once we were better.

We got politicians running races on corporate cash 

Now don't tell me they don't turn around and kiss them peoples' ass 

You may call me old-fashioned but that don't fit my picture of a true democracy 

and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free 

 We got CEO's making two hundred times the workers' pay
but they'll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage and 

If you don't like it, mister, they'll ship your job to
some third-world country 'cross the sea 

and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free.

And yes, "you may call me old-fashioned" but I still think we can be better..