Democracy (is coming to the U.S.A)

[Benjamin Frank 2.0]

Song by Leonard Cohen written between 1989-1992 (like Hallelujah, Cohen wrote over 60 versus for the song) for those who think that any of their concerns are new. Of course, Trump is  worse than anything that has come before in the U.S, but greed, loneliness, crime, homelessness, distraction are all referenced in the song, for instance, along with obviously the notion that the present U.S system of U.S democracy isn't exactly real.

Surprisingly to me public drug use isn't referenced but that goes back to at least the 1960s as well. For one example of that is the film Panic in Needle Park (starring Al Pacino) back from 1971. Of course, that film was co-written by the great moral panicer Joan Didion*, so it may have been sensationalized for its day.

It's coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there
From the war against disorder
to the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
to the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A

It's coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
From the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
Which I don't pretend to understand at all
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay
From the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of Chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A

It's coming from the sorrow of the street
The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchen'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A

Sail on, sail on
O Mighty Ship of State
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
Through the squalls of hate
Sail on, sail on...

It's coming to America first
the cradle of the best and of the worst
It's here they've got the range
and the machinery for change
And it's here they've got the spiritual thirst
It's here the family's broken
And it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A

It's coming from the women and the men
Oh baby, we'll be making love again
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A

Sail on, sail on
O Mighty ship of state
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
through the squalls of hate
Sail on, sail on...

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
That time cannot decay
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A

These are four of the unused verses

From the church where the outcasts can hide from the Masque
Where the blood is dignified
Like the fingers on your hand,
like an hourglass of sand
We can separate but not divide
And I know your baby’s missing, but we sited her today
She was cleaning her machine-gun, she was waving her beret
Democracy is coming to the USA

It ain’t comin' to us European-style,
Concentration camp behind the smile;
It ain’t comin' from the east
With its temporary feast
As Count Dracula comes strolling down the aisle.
And I know your baby’s missing, but we sited her today
She was cleaning her machine-gun, she was waving her beret
Democracy is coming to the USA

First we killed the Lord, then we stole the Blues
This guttered people always in the news
But who really gets to laugh behind the Black man’s back
When he makes his little crack about the Jews?
Who really gets to profit? And who really gets to pay?
Who gets to ride the slavery ship right into Charleston Bay?
Democracy is coming to the USA

From the church where the outcasts can hide
Or the mosque where the blood is dignified
Like the fingers on your hand
Like the hourglass of sand
We can separate but not divide
From the eye above the pyramid
And the dollar’s cruel display
From the law behind the law
Behind the law we still obey
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

*Also for those not familiar, Joan Didion was the preeminent moral panic essayist of her day. On the Manson Family murders she wrote: “Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”

This was a reference to supposedly everybody knowing that the hedonism of drugs and sex in Los Angeles along with the mixing of celebrity and commoner that went along with it had to end in some kind of violence. Except, that's nonsense. Celebrities for instance did not get padlocks for their doors and buy guns in extraordinary numbers until after the murders, not before.

The paranoia was only in the minds of the moral panic types like Joan Didion. And, even though it happened, Charles Manson was clearly an extreme outlier and not representative of any wider community. (Unlike Donald Trump.)