Not In Our Exceptionist Backyard

Let the damn fool Euros go off and smash them whatever hadrons together, anyways

Wont find the tallest skyscrapers anywhere close to this proudly neglected urban blight

Not Even building the largest dams ta produce the most hydroelectric power around here

Ain’t taking the lead in some kind of flaky asteroid investigation mission, either, dammit

Don’t be looking for no far-too-expensive high speed rail in this here one nation under god

That next-gen thorium powerplant wont get built close to our artificially green backyards

My hopey-dopey-changey neighbor’s new solar panels are from china, not sunny SoCal

The greedy innovators of our banking geniuses aren’t backing no micro-finance revolution here

Not foolish enough to tax carbon emissions and threaten our mighty, yet oh-so fragile economy

Waitin on them Asians to ship us tiny, efficient cars that meet our new economic stations

We’re flocking overseas for treatment despite our havin the Worlds Finest Healthcare System

Listen, our kids dont need to be in the global top 10 in reading, math or science ta lead the world

Lettin others innovate that expensive smart power grid before we buy into it  - from them

Energy efficiency and buildin to last is simply not part of our Traditional Family Values®

Just get all them foreign PhDs on back outta here to teach and research and do startups at home

Our agribusiness don’t need ta lead globally by example in protecting precious farming topsoil

Wont find that worlds fastest internet in my neighborhood, not by a long shot, no Siree

Not even trying to produce like more food using less water, fertilizer and pesticides

But we are energetically increasing both our illiteracy and incarceration rates at the same time

Turnin our backs on reason, science and education just as fast as any heathen ayrab foreigners

Lettin our once-good drinking water poison us even as them Bangladeshis finally get clean wells

Nudgin our offshored multitudes towards the peasant lifestyle as Asians take to our former level

Not even demonstratin the benefits of diet, exercise and clean living to the whole world

Arent leading globally in bringing solar, wind and geothermal energy online either, by god

Satisfied back in the international pack in life expectancy, nutrition and infant mortality

Caint create the better jobs they promised when they reaped huge bonuses fer outsourcing us

Spineless coalition building aint catching on with us, the proudly polarized and paralyzed

Wont find none of our giant gas-guzzlers on the jammed streets of any crowded Asian city

Aren’t giving up our global lead in obesity, diabetes and hypertension, no way, not on your life

Proud to stand up against this costly, intrusive, messy and socialistic recycling hoax

Don’t ever bet on us not spending more on arms than all the rest of them losers combined

Aren’t building the newest ships here to bring over our imported oil and electronic gizzies

Replacing manufacturing with no-benefit, poverty-level service jobs faster than them all

Focusing on important issues like flag burning, abortion, gay rights, school prayer and gun laws

Not signing on ta this sustainability scam with the wack and weak-kneed one-worlders

Relying on god and the free marketplace for solutions, not their tired, failed social planning crap

Maintaining Our Sacred Dumbocracy

Commend a contempt for any literacy

Cultivate their urge to violence

Enhance the foreign boogeymen

Promote the artificial spectacle

Distract with empty franchised sport

Bury cryptic legalese within fine print

Foster distrust of long-term planning

Dumb down their grades and tests

Play soothing background music

Show peaceful family pictures

Leave journalism to the advertisers

Stay focused on short-term costs

Control science thru political debate

Finance their spot in a fuzzy heaven

Concoct hot-button litmus tests

Pit your enemies against our families

Seed the media with paid spokesmen

Stick to short hyperbolized sound bites

Read canned speeches with great passion

Relentlessly remain on simple, concocted messages

Paint all the issues in black or white

Celebrate with colorful, noisy waste

Always portray them as His Chosen People

Pretend to own the higher moral ground

Belittle those who go in-depth

Substitute tweets for editorials

Forgo plot for special effects

Help them to be dependent on illegal labor

Reward them richly for gutting industr

Label air, water and soil as ignorable externalities

Equate blind greed with patriotism

Cite tradition but ignore real history

Anoint Social Darwinism as god’s will

Call bankers ourA Best and Brightest

Keep fast food and cold beer cheap

Promise them that their kids shall lead the world

We’re Living Funny Lies

Being coptered to my safe compound, I actually believe I’m worth my millions in salary and bonuses

We assure our Offshored they need only wait for the better new jobs coming Real Soon Now

Driving my hybrid 90 miles a day feeling like, you know what, I’m really making a difference here

We fill cute green cotton bags with water-wasting, slave-produced food shipped thousands of miles

Violently rejecting taxation while remaining purposely silent on reducing costs or cutting benefits

Fleecing the faithful for money, power and sex, as sales reps for wornout and fictional gods

Pushing FeelGood sustainable solutions but never mentioning necessary drastic population reductions

Glorifying the infallibility of unregulated markets while whining for subsidies and import tariffs

Assiduously recycling all my paper for shipment to china, merely to package more plastic imports

Demanding a faith-based administration but shouting that the same government stay out of our lives

Hypnotizing the lower class with clever hate speech while on the payroll of the corporate elite

Knowing our God is love as we heed His jealous demand that we smite His heathen enemies

Plastisizing my car with earth-friendly slogans made in toxic sweatshops by exploited illegales

Feeding the world with a patented seed, genetically modified to require our costly pesticides

Abandoning old suburbs for that newly-bulldozed but carbon-neutral and greener tomorrow

Hard-selling funds we purposely stuffed with crap, even as we ourselves hedge big against them

Calling for an end to greedy development threatening the gorgeous viewshed from my own new home

Gouging the bourgeois with pricey lifestyle drugs as we ignore the global disease scourges of the poor

Hanging a cute puppy calendar right by the table where I lay out our tasty but tortured family veal

Deliberately warping all their proposed legislation while damning the deceptions of the other side

Howling for freedom from government even as we condemn its lack of quick emergency response

Rebranding an unchanged, business as usual as some new, patriotic clean-coal energy independence

Paying huge premiums for USDA organics uninspectedly coming from, of all places, china

Posing as independent cowboy heroes, trampling predator-freed public lands with our welfare cattle

Posturing obesely in a loud and ugly pickup that I certainly don’t need and really can’t afford

Trumpeting the virtues of a foot-dragging negativism to whip up an ignorant anger in the alt-right

Holding guilt-free to the decision made with my personal savior to smite religious fundamentalism

Praising our sacred Human Resources even as we plot to outsource them and renege on their pensions

Ever proclaiming our holocaust suffering while we wall the Palestinians into a hot, desert ghetto

Parroting your donor propaganda to reframe science into an empty and politicized media debate

Subsidizing Wall Street Cons to pimp phony carbon offsets and Ponzi cap and trade scams

Demanding soil conservation as I endlessly fertilize, pesticide, cut and water my fakely-green lawn

Rapping out that yes-yes, we can-can change: and backdoor dealing just like we always have-have

Grazing swinishly at the rich troth of absolutely unquestionable and ever-increasing arms outlays

Nurturing a fat, ignorant pride on Doritos, Twinkies, beer, generic cigarettes and cheap hamburg

Living the lie that it’ll all somehow make sense in the end, during some, real fuzzy, happy-ever-after

Turns Out

Turns out there really were some reasons why we needed them silly bugs and birds and frogs

Now we see we should have been a little bit more careful with our once rich farming soils

It’s hard to believe that overfishing a few species brought on such a broad collapse

Who could have ever imagined that we weren’t actually our only one true god’s chosen people?

Guess we really should have paid just a little bit more attention to our crashing literacy rate

Turns out it was foolish to always spend so much building costly weapons and ginning up wars

Unexpectedly, it’s revealed that mergers and acquisitions were only for creating lavish bonuses

Despite everyone’s firm beliefs, that fabulous real estate bubble burst, just like all the others

Whoever would’ve thought the free market wouldn’t provide affordable universal healthcare?

Somehow we never noticed at all as we so rapidly tainted our vast stores of clean, fresh water

Turns out that our sheer numbers created problems too expensive and complex for us to fix

Wow, so those constantly rising temperatures really did mean something, in the end

Didn’t realize that sterile, bio-engineered moncrops would all succumb at once to identical pests

So surprised that filling the oceans with plastic particulates would collapse the marine food chain

Struck dumb by finally noticing that, when all the oil was gone, we hadn’t sought real alternatives

Turns out the bankers got it all so very wrong, even without burdensome government regulation

Turns out we shouldn’t have rolled empty credit card debt into our homes as often as possible

Why look at this, it really was stupid to pay $200/mo for phones and $150/mo for cable

Huh, so, snowmobiling, jetskiing and OHVing are actually destructive and not just family recreation?

Well, goddamn, those outsourced jobs don’t actually make way for the new and better ones for us

Maybe letting the greedy, vain and sociopathic be self-appointed Masters of the universe was wrong

Turns out that conglomerates could find it legal and moral to profitably adulterate their products

We never dreamed they’d lay us off forever at 50, in debt, with no savings, pensions or insurance

Cutting costs by blindly trusting outsourced, foreign ingredients wound up poisoning customers

Looks like giant, shoddily-built, energy-wasting McMansions might not be the way going forward

Stunningly, doctors and Pharma realized they made much more money on treatment than prevention

Turns out stalling safety regulations for more research always saved firms money in the short run

Later on, their own bloated estimates indisputably proved the problems were far too expensive to fix

Come to find out all our thousand tiny household sources did add up to a major pollution issue

How surprised we were to learn that double meat bacon cheeseburgers were not actually healthy

It seems silly that dutiful paper recycling was sent all the way to china just to wrap up more imports

Turns out the big banks were actually blackmailing the market with demands for a no-strings bailout

Turns out their imaginary only one true god was on their side just as much as our own was with us

Nobody guessed our kid’s future would not be brighter than our own was, once we were done here

Oddly, the all-important economy collapsed once it destroyed the very ecosystems that supported it

Turns out not even a trace of our messy presence remained after the passing of but one geologic era

Our Paternalistic Libertarianism

Continuously improve existing social programs with replacement by trickle-down tax cuts for the rich

Save maybe a few of the very last redwoods but enforce the right to life under a penalty of death

Preserve our future with pre-school handgun training and creationism studies for 3^rd graders

Subsidize solar power but, by god, make sure you also hurry up and Drill Baby Drill!

Mandate universal freemarket healthcare with no government regulation, rationing or death panels

End stripmining and clearcutting while keeping federal agencies totally out of private business

Let them recycle to save the planet, but maintain a smirking sarcasm aimed at the clueless squishes

Wrist-slap the bankers but guarantee new terms on their equity-robbed, underwater home loans

Disgorge pre-masticated mouthfuls of difficult decisions but let them go in-depth with alt-right news

Preserve our precious fresh water without any burdensome and intrusive regulations

Establish gay marriage but subject them all to an ongoing, evangelical, christian healing

Dump your trash in the woods as vegans recycle paper to china to make more of your packaging

Ban flag burning but continue letting the government spy on us in secret, with total impunity

End the grocery meat holocaust but without raising the price of our kid’s beloved hot dogs

So save the damn earth but don’t you dare alter the consumer lifestyle of our precious families

Maybe gift Wall Street a phony Cap and Trade market but without forcing any emissions reductions

Teach your sons to fish but don’t enforce the pollution laws so that they might eat what they catch

Convert the government to Spanish for latino votes even while forcefully expelling all those illegales

Purchase plenty of room in commercial prisons after we graduate the fatherless as amoral illiterates

No new taxes ever, but spread car rebates, bank bailouts and loan guarantees all around

Support noble freedom fighters everywhere but crush out all those fanatical terrorist insurgents

Answer the enemy’s illegal invasions with our own pre-emptively defensive wars of liberation

Encourage a reasoned public debate but control it with distorted, donor-funded 30 second soundbites

Destroy unfair foreign trade barriers to allow free export of lobbyists government subsidized products

End abortion murders but continue to ignore the 40% born as bastards to our blessed mothers

Bring God into our government but keep its fool regulations way the hell out of our businesses

In private talks with personal saviors, decide to make war upon the evil fundamentalist jihadis

Call for independent thinking while encouraging their pointless immersion in corporate sports

Cut these wasteful liberal social programs but don’t leave a single child behind at school

Talk of our great love of peace but spend more on weapons than all the other lands combined

Foster a free-range cowboy spirit in those living in dank apartment burrows of suburban wastelands

Scorn the liberal media conspiracy with a thousand conservative, evangelical, fake-news tweets

Encourage math and science while ridiculing scientists from mass entertainment/news pulpits

Proudly stamp Packaged In America on the cheapest imports that you can negligently offshore

Restore their lost but noble native culture through gambling, tobacco, fireworks and liquor

Trumpet Personal Responsibility while creating huge government deficits for their children

Get the mercury out of our kids brains without needless regulation of patriotic coal power plants

Nurture the fragile economy while degrading every natural system that supports it very existence

Help Me Not To Hate, Let Me Just Ignore

Curb my hatred of the proud and scornful ignorance that loudly proclaims our superiority

Stifle my loathing of greasy car salesmen, lying real estate agents and one-track CEOs

Help cap off my intense disgust with monomaniac self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe

Shame on my anger at the purposeless noise from which we derive so much simple pleasure

Help me not to hate pale political compromise, as satisfying to all sides as cold oatmeal

Stop me from wasting energy railing against the corrupt nature of organized religions

End my bitter diatribes over the rapid and unconscious waste of all of our non-renewables

Let me blissfully ignore the brutal, post-modern efficiency of our food animal holocaust

Grant me relief from my wasted worry over the absolute non-issue of human overpopulation

Control my wish to club those falsely cloaking themselves in so-called Traditional Family ValuesÔ

Halt my useless ranting upon the utter unsustainability of our vapid consumerism

Help me overcome the overwhelming feeling that, this time, the sky really must be falling

Make me just ignore their canned and dumbed-down homilies read with smarmy & self-assured smirks

Enable me to silently accept an ever-filthier and even more degraded natural world, every day

Reduce my revulsion over the grant of divine souls only to us by the musty gods we alone invented

Deliver me from my pointless and weak concern over our agricultural soil microbe communities

Stay my hand from smiting the lawyers, accountants, insurers and financiers

Help me not hate the unquestioned spending of more every year on our so-called dEfense

Don’t let me attack our wise but pale corporate masters safe inside their locked compounds

Staunch my concern over such inconsequentialities as breathable air and potable water

Deaden me to the grating noise of their witlessly destructive gas-powered ‘wreckreation’

Stop me noticing as one beautiful and perfectly adapted species after another just disappears

Keep my mind from dwelling on blackmailed bailouts doled out to banks with no strings attached

Lower my unrealistic expectations regarding our own morality and intelligence

Aid me in not dwelling too long upon the microscopic insignificance of my own tiny voice

Help me not to hate the self-promoters who have to grab the microphone in front of the cameras

Show me I should not look down upon the ordinary sloth, ignorance and obese over-consumption

Quell the anger that arises when I hear the foreign tongues, quite at home in my own land

Let me not even bother to scorn the venal, profit-seeking of the entertainment or tourist industries

Save me from drowning in a rank skepticism fueled daily by all of those so very sordid current affairs

Quiet my rude sarcasm over our hi-def worship of hulking sports illiterates in skin tight pants

Quench my disgust with their never-ending Quick and dirty and the permanent Just for now

Stop me shouting over the stirring faux-patriotic music of their euphemistic sound bite hyperbole

End my squishy concern over all the things that are destroyed daily, without even being noticed

Halt my cynicism as their reasoned debates degrade into loud, twisted exaggeration and blatant lies

Help me not to hate myself so much for being so inextricably dependent on all these ugly things