We frequently turn to the history of other totalitarian regimes to understand what's happening in our country right now, but there's no need to look abroad. We fought a war against white supremacists a century and a half ago, won it, and then walked away from our victory, allowing them to perpetrate a continuing reign of terror until the middle of this century. The Voting Rights Act will not, it seems, last even half that long.
The words to this song are adapted from W.E.B. DuBois's Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880, a history book that was ignored and suppressed until the 1960s and will probably be banned again if any of the Repugnants manage to read it. Some are DuBois's own words, others are his quotes of people like Thaddeus Stevens.
The book is essential reading; a detailed account of a time he lived through, the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, the betrayal of Black Americans, and the restoration of the white supremacists to governance not twenty years after they'd started a war.
Democracy was done to death
Stupidity triumphant
The storms of despotism
Sicklied o'er with sentiment
The penalty a land pays
When free discussion is stifled
The propaganda ablaze
Racists raise their rifles
Welcome back the seccessionists
Whitewash cruelty and oppression
Indulge the insurrectionists
Refuse to learn the lesson
The hate survived their lost cause
We let them keep their racist laws
Human rights were sacrificed
Barbarity remained a blight
Force, fraud and slander
A crescendo of cursing and filth
Callous hardened judgments
Cemented with hate
@angelinapowersuit Mar 2022
Wow, love how you twisted that song all up, gets to the point of hysterical tension. How appropriate :-) "Racists raise their rifles." Well done!
@mikeskliar Feb 2022
those sideways 'glory glory hallelujah' melodies in there, distorted and altered, give this a suitably Civil War/Reconstruction-as-nightmare-bad-acid-trip track its spine-- really well done.
@boycetown Feb 2022
I love the distopian vibe to this song as it kind of swirls around and rips apart that familiar railroad song. I feel like the vocals need something else to glue them in - but not sure what. You have a message to get across, so can't make them too contorted, maybe just some layers of dissonance on the sides/background if that's possible.