Presented with little commentary or excuse, the young libertarian poet’s thoughts during the feverish Bush years. (Even the horrible line breaks are accurate. The capitalization is also as written. I am so sorry.) I would like to say this make me feel better about my progress in the past 12 years, but good God is this painful and funny both. I sound a lot dumber than I thought I was back then.
I was super into not using “we” when talking about America during this time. (Which is a good rhetorical point, that I have admittedly dropped entirely now.) I was also pretty sick of “United We Stand” as a rallying cry. You can see that as I subversively add a question mark to the poem’s title. Look, there were a lot of flags around all the time and I was getting mad.
I actually remember reading this to my homeschool English group to some amount of awkward silence. Once Iraq came along, my terribly edgy sentiment was a little more welcome, if only because these good Christian conservatives weren’t all jazzed about that whole invasion business either.
United We Stand?
Tell us what We are
Pawns for Public Service
We Support
When you give us words
What he says — They do
and They make us We
Broadcast as the mood
Love it or leave it
Or cry quietly to be heard by
The arrogant freedom fighter
When there’s nobody like you
Then tell us we stand united
And lean us over the edge
Pray for the chance
For I told you so’s
Here we are, so we’re taken with the tide
– Anarchy anyone?
So maybe they fight
For the nation and the world
But what’s paving that road?