American Rose

i love my country, in case you need to know
i carry it with me everywhere i go
i was born and raised here, by luck and by design
i love my country but it scares me sometimes

i love the people and i love the land
like a good idea you could hold in your hand
but the system is broken and the mainspring is jammed
and i barely know who i am

oh i walked proudly, i put my ballot in the box
and i watched it disappear like a bag full of rocks
i watched the scales tilt all the way over to the right
and i looked into the darkness, i didn’t see any light

for we’ve crossed over now to a dangerous time
where vengeance and corruption underscore the bottom line
where fascism sits the in high office of the land
with a bible and a gavel in its hand

and there’s a clown face, acting like a laughing stock
call him crazy but he’ll take everything you’ve got
it may be dangerous to speak but I’ll take that chance
because I live in the same circumstance as you do

i love my country, even when it’s buried under
like the sky loves the rain, like the lightning loves the thunder
like a question loves an answer and I do too
i’m tired of gettin’ lied to

there were students in Germany in 1942
they had to do somethin’, didn’t know what to do
there was nobody talking, everybody froze
they called themselves the white rose

they printed up leaflets and they mailed them around
they slipped them into phonebooks in every part of town
and they made a lot of noise without making a sound
till someone turned them in and the ax came down

now, i don’t know if we’re that far yet
but if we ever are, better not to forget
that there are meanings in place of the unspoken words
and every sheep is just a member of the herd

so this is my pamphlet and this is my song
i didn’t have a lot of time so i mighta got somethin’ wrong
but when nobody’s talkin’, when everybody’s froze
we need a red, white, and blue America rose
we need a red, white, and blue America rose