Brutally Honest Special: We Live in Dangerous Times
Audio Transcripts
07/04/07
Good afternoon everyone… I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.
Normally at this time I do a weekly rant to talk about the things going on in the world. But because today is Independence Day for the United States, I decided to do something a little different and a little special.
Today I took some time and recorded a new song. This is a mixture of my audio rant and some original music, and I URGE everyone to not just read the lyrics but to also LISTEN to the song itself.
Let me know what you think about this song by posting your comments over at the weblog page, which you can find at http://d2brutallyhonest.blogspot.com and I hope all my U.S. Brutally Honest supporters have an enjoyable 4th of July holiday.(Computer – “We Live in Dangerous Times” – by David Matthews 2)
– lyrics by David
We live in dangerous times.
We live in a time where we convince ourselves that we live in the freest nation in the world, and that we should be PROUD of that achievement. And then, in the same breath, we complain that we are, perhaps, TOO free.
We need to give up some of that freedom for decency and for morality and for little children. We need to give up some of that freedom for security and patriotism and nationalism. We need to give up some of that freedom for peace. We need to give up some of that freedom because somewhere in the world somebody is pissed off about that freedom.
We live in dangerous times.
We live in a time where theocracy is dressed up as democracy and sold to us as destiny. A time when virtues are measured, not by their applications, but by their origins. Belief is more valuable than fact. Blind zealous obedience is more important than rational arguments. Bigotry and hypocrisy are considered character traits.
We live in dangerous times.
In the middle of the 20th Century, during the darkest times of human activity, the leader of the freest nation in the world said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
At the start of the 21st Century, during a period of equally dark times, the leader of the freest nation in the world, and those who pledged their personal allegiance to him, said that we should ALWAYS be afraid, and not just of fear itself. That we should stifle all dissent out of that fear. That we should bite out tongues and hold our criticism of our leaders because of that fear. That we should give up that which makes us the freest nation in the world BECAUSE of that fear.
We live in dangerous times.
We live in a time where we have the greatest personal controls for the media that we use, and yet we have those in government, and those who support government, who are advocating for even more OPPRESSION over that same media we use. Who complain that the tools are not there, and then when they are, they complain that the people are too fundamentally incompetent to know how to use them.
One hundred radio stations reduced to being endless commercials with the occasional musical break. One thousand channels of boring, repetitive, prefabricated mush, reduced at times to a level that even children find ridiculous. One billion websites censored or sanitized, and if you want something that is not sanitized then you either have to pay extra for it, or find some way to steal it.
We marvel at our technology, always hungry for the next convenient item. The better phone, the next operating system, the faster Internet connection. But nobody ever thinks about privacy; until at last you realize that your personal life has become someone else’s fishbowl. And only then are we outraged about it and try in vain to slam on the brakes of this runaway train powered by hype.
We live in dangerous times.
Our very names are up for sale, sold repeatedly by banks and private companies and by those whose very fortunes were made off the marketing of our names. These companies and these banks then have the audacity to hold US responsible when our names are used by those who drive us to bankruptcy or to commit crimes in our names. They tell us that WE let them do
it, when they knowingly hide their duplicity in words that would give Shakespeare a stroke.
Hiding somewhere in that mountain of doublespeak and crafted in microscopic fine print is the bill of sale for your very life… if only you knew where it was.
We are told that our lives are meaningless unless we are in debt. Pay off that debt and you are told that you need to get back into debt. And all for what? A bigger house? A newer car? A longer vacation? The latest video game? A better TV set?
The American Dream was originally about self-sustenance. It was about independence. Now it is about going into debt, and staying in debt for the rest of our lives… and believing that THIS is somehow what freedom is all about.
We live in dangerous times.
We live in a time where we deify our celebrities and our athletes and our politicians. We put them on pedestals and turn them into gods and tell them that they are not like us and that don’t have to follow the same rules as the rest of us. And then we get outraged when they do just that.
Equality used to be the coin of opportunity; now it is the expected bill of sale. We don’t want equal opportunity anymore. Now we just want equal results, even if we don’t make the same effort for it.
We live in dangerous times.
We live in a time when words like “freedom” and “liberty” are reduced to being nothing more than convenient buzzwords. To where “freedom of” is overruled by “freedom from”. To where offending someone is an inexcusable and unpardonable crime, but crimes paramount to treason are tolerated, justified, and even excused. To where “choice” is reduced to only the “acceptable" options. And who decides what choices are allowed? Why it is the very people who think that we should have no choices at all.
We live in dangerous times.
We live in a time when people are led to believe that they don’t have to worry about the bigger problems down the road. We’re told to forget about them, because we’re only just a few years away from the end of everything anyway. Who cares about rising oil prices and runaway budget deficits? Why worry about corrupt politicians and out-of-control bureaucrats? Why be concerned with government agencies that will soon be too expensive to sustain and too politically caustic to eliminate? Why care about abuses of government power? Armageddon is coming, and all we need to do is to just look busy.
We live in dangerous times.
And maybe some day we will wake up and realize what is being done to us, and for us, and in our name. Maybe then we will remember what those convenient buzzwords really mean. Maybe we will be able to find some way to put a stop to these dangerous times before they get much worse for us… and before our dangerous times truly become our “end times”.
One thing is for certain… these dangerous times won’t go away on their own.
(Lyrics from “We Live in Dangerous Times” by David Matthews 2, produced by Get Brutal Productions, 2007. All rights reserved.)(Fade out)
[End of program]
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1 comment:
Very well done, David! This song provides just the kind of edgy sound which, as a background to the thought-provoking message, helps to bring into stark reality those dangers of which you speak. Of all of our freedoms which we celebrate on our National Birthday, the 4th of July, freedom of speech must be considered the greatest, for without it all of the other freedom we take for granted can be or in many instances already have been eroded by the very rich and the very powerful. No longer can we look to our politicians for guidance and hope for the future. Now we must look very carefully and most suspiciously at each, wondering whether they are who they say they are and if they really do stand for what they say they do. Or are they simply a cardboard cut-out figure backed by increasingly influential private interests?
We do indeed live in very dangerous times.
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