Jackson Browne – Lives in the Balance – Lyrics about American Foreign policy, war and injustice
This song was written quite a while ago but still feels just as pertinent today. Who knows what is going on around the world? Who is stirring up trouble? Who is fomenting the wars raging all over the globe in obscure regions? What are their motives? This could be Syria, Nigeria, Sudan, Iraq, or tens of others.
Is this all just a political game intended to destabilise? To test out the strength of the opposition? Are Russia and America still locked in some power struggle taking place in other parts of the world? Are we quite happy for all these people to tear themselves to bits so that they are too weak to threaten us? Are we being manipulated into taking stances and views about other groups of people around the world and what they are up to? Is it all Orwell’s 1984? We believe what we are told to believe. The double-think rules. Our enemies change and they are who are masters want us to think are our enemies.
The world is kept in constant war. We make a killing supplying the combatants.
It’s all going to plan.
Plenty money to be made supplying the army with the tools of the trade.
Who profits?
Who are the shadowy figures who stand in the background organising all this mayhem? All I know is that they keep themselves well out of it.
This Jackson Browne number is a brilliant expose of what is going on in our name.
Jackson Browne
Lives In The Balance
I’ve been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you’ve seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war
There’s a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interests run
On the radio talk shows and TV
You hear one thing again and again
How the USA stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends?
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can’t take anymore
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire
There’s a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can’t even say the names
They sell us the president the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us everything from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can’t be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they’re never the ones to fight or to die
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire