As I was driving home this afternoon, I happened to listen to Waiting on the World to Change by John Mayer. It's a lovely sounding song - Mayer has a lot of talent and great pipes - but I don't agree with his lyrics. It is interesting in this era of an unpopular war to listen to this generation of protest songs. Click on the link above for the full set of lyrics to the song.
Basically Mayer's message is that our generation is misunderstood and people think we don't stand for anything. "Now we see everything that's going wrong/ with the world and those who lead it/ we just feel like we don't have the means/ to rise above and beat it." Wow, what an amazing attitude - that will get you places.
Now, if you're reading this you may think I am taking a song way too seriously, but it's a serious topic and raises some questions. First, we live in the richest country in the world. We can vote, we can say what we like without the gestapo whisking us away in the middle of the night - we pretty much have every means at our disposal to make change happen. If you're bothered about what's going on, use your head, use your voice, use your youth and energy. If you're over 25, start a grassroots campaign and run for office. We live in a NOW society, but change can take a while. It took time to get where we are, and it will take time to change direction.
The second thing in Mayer's lyrics that bothered me was "and when you trust your television/ what you get is what you got/ cause when they own the information, oh/ they can bend it all they want." Ok - this is incredible. If you're getting all of your news from television you may need some more help than one woman can provide. Never in the history of the world have we had such amazing access to all sorts of media - not only newspaper and radio, but a cornucopia of web content. With the web, nobody owns the information. Download an RSS reader and subscribe to newsfeeds! Make your own information in a free blog or web site. Rank the importance of a news story at Digg.com. I am a librarian and therefore I try to get my news from a variety of sources, and I can guarantee you I am not seeing only pro-war content out there. Salon and the New York Times are huge and freely accessible on the web if you want perspectives that you feel you aren't getting from the Fox News network.
Finally, the third line I want to take to task is: "It's not that we don't care/ we just know that the fight ain't fair/ so we keep on waiting/ waiting for the world to change." A fair fight? I'm sorry, but the fight began when we were suckerpunched by suicidal monsters in airplanes. That wasn't fair.
Even if there was no link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, we took down an absolute despot. This is a guy who would have his countrymen arrested, strip them naked, hang them by their hands with their arms backward, and have them beaten or electrocuted to death. In any case, I am sure Saddam Hussein would not have refused the opportunity to have a go at the Great Satan with Osama bin Laden. I find it interesting that those who say conservatives see things only in black and white tend to have some of their own monchromatic viewpoints.
So John, I have to say I give it a 5 for the music and a 0 for the lyrics. I'm just not buying it. Being passive and being a pacifist don't mean the same thing. Remember, my young minstrel - a man of thought AND action gets more chicks.
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2 comments:
Hi loveheart7,
I don't know if you will come back to read this at all, but thank you for your comments. It's interesting to hear what people have to say about this subject, especially those in different countries. I had to think a lot as I did this post, because it is such a controversial topic. What makes it hard for me too is that I come from a military family (in fact, I really don't know of any ancestors going back several generations who were not military) and so it is hard to keep objectivity there. I hate that we are over in Iraq. I would love nothing more than to have our soldiers back, and those in other countries go back to their homes. It's a huge mess, and I know several people that have been there or are there now and it just terrifies me. I think was is so upsetting as well is that Americans obviously don't want to be hated, especially by countries that they normally have pretty good relations with, such as Australia and the UK, among others.
Hi Annie :)
I really like your post; I agree with loveheart7 in the sense that thoughtful US citizens are becoming rarer by each second. I'm very happy to know people like you!
I would like to point out though, that even though removing Sadam Husain was a good side-effect of the war in Iraq, it was not the proposed objective of the war. The war was marketed by the administration as a anti-terrorist, anti-weapons of mass destruction movement. Both of them turned out to be false; with the possibility that the administration and its advisory staff had this knowledge already.
One could make the point that other grave genocidal situations exist in other places in the world, i.e. Africa, yet those situations do not get the same attention as Iraq does. I wonder if it's because oil is not involved. Just my two cents :)
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