Tag Archives: Have You Embraced the Beast?

What…? Not this Old Beast again?

Have You Embraced the Beast?

War! What’s it good for?
Say it, say it, say it again…

So… this song, below, is certainly not one of my best songs, by a stretch. And, yet, I’ve posted a slug of versions of it here on the AYoS parade of songwriting shame…

What gives?

It’s this damn war, I tell you.

Like the overwhelming majority of US citizens, I’m sick to death of it, sick of the suffering of others, sick of the squandered sacrifices of our men and women who feel called to fight, sick of the lies, and sick of the excuses of those politicains and legislators who claim they were fooled into supporting it.

That, my friends, is a sock full of shit.

The truth about what US intelligence analysts really thought about Saddam and the supposed threat he posed to the the Middle East and the US was known then, as it is known now.

It was, indeed, in — if not all the papers — certainly in responsible, mainstream publications like the Christian Science Monitor and plenty of others, even if the supposedly liberal New York Times seemed to focus all its energies on promoting this most foolish of modern boondoggles of death, destruction, and cynical profiteering.

And it was well covered in the British and Australian press who had a lot less temerity when it came time to speak “truth to power” and seemed far less worried about offending those whose first response to the 9/11 attacks was to rain death and destruction indiscriminately on any handy villains, guilty or not.

Now… don’t get me wrong.

I did support the incursion into Afghanistan to get the people who our intel officials did think were behind the 9/11 attacks — and who, in fact, were bold enough to take credit for it. Hell, I thought just the act of claiming credit was worthy of some serious ass-kicking…

But there was — in the words of our very own intel and security experts — “little or no credible evidence” of Saddam Hussein’s purported involvement with the attacks.

Yet, there we were, confronted by the sorry spectacle of not just the idiot-president’s own party of warmongering lackies (full disclosure: I am a Republican) rushing to join the gangpile of those willfully ignoring the truth — but the “loyal opposition” — the then-Democratic Congressional leadership joining the festival of deception and disingenuity, rushing to vote for war against a nation for which there was little or no credible evidence of involvement in the monstrous attacks on New York and Washington.

So… yeah… this Old Beast, again…

A note about today’s version: This recording was actually made in early 1998 as part of the AYoS precursor, TK Major’s Song of the Day. Unlike the mostly acoustic/folk AYoS, the SotD project was all over the map, production and style-wise but this song, with its string arrangement (OK, synthetic strings, to be sure, I’d already spent the retirement money I could have devoted to hiring a real string section) and putatively soothing background vocal harmonies, was an odd duck, even for that polystylistic culture jumble.

Have You Embraced the Beast?

more stream & DL options

previous versions
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Thursday, January 11, 2007

lyrics
Have You Embraced the Beast?

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do you serve the war machine?
Have you embraced the beast?
Did you trade in your soul on (for) the finer things?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do your taxes buy bullets for fascist death squads?
Have you embraced the beast?
They’ll be coming to your hometown before too long . . .

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?

(C)1984, 2007, TK Major

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Coming to your hometown before too long…

Have you embraced the Beast?

He never thought he’d be glad to see tanks rolling down Main Street.

But after masked gunmen with machine guns and grenades killed the mayor and half the city council, he decided maybe martial law wasn’t so bad.

The regional authority said it was the foreign fighters but the rumor spread quickly through town that the gunmen spoke only awkward, oddly accented pidgin Spanish among themselves and several times lapsed into what sounded like American English, recognizable even in the chaos of death and destruction.

But there was no knowing. The police had mostly either been killed or had deserted.

When the tanks rolled into town, it was a relief — even if a lot of folks suspected it was the regional authority behind the attacks, anyway.

Six months later and the regional authority had been commandeering private homes to bivouac troops — or extracting exorbitant “resettlement avoidance fees” from those who could come up with the money. The schools hadn’t opened in five months. There was only electricity 4 hours a day most days.

Since the water plant had been bombed, citizens were dependent on regional authority water trucks — and if you wanted to make sure your four hour wait for water was fruitful, you had to cough up bribes to assure yourself a place in the front of the queue.

Bribes were the rule. And when there was no money or no electronics or no furniture, then people sold what they could; it was a desperate, clawing marketplace of desperation and doomsday carnality.

He found himself obsessing these days on how it all started. Sometimes it felt like it must have been this way for generations — but he remembered the crisp winter day little more than a decade earlier, the abortion of an election and the installation of the loser as president.

He hadn’t thought it was such a big deal at the time — after all, he’d voted for the appointed president along with something considerably less than half the voters. Still, it was close, he had told himself. Someone had to do something.

But , now, every time he traced it all back… that’s where everything seemed to start — like the first mortal error, the first offense against the gods in some epic tragedy.

___________________

Not, you know, to put too fine a point on it (or perhaps too ham-fisted a fist)… but this song below is dedicated to the appointed president — who I –unlike the protagonist in the vignette above, did not vote for:

Internet Archive page for this recording

December 13, 2005 version
February 15, 2006 version

Have You Embraced the Beast?

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do you serve the war machine?
Have you embraced the beast?
Did you trade in your soul on (for) the finer things?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do your taxes buy bullets for fascist death squads?
Have you embraced the beast?
They’ll be coming to your hometown before too long . . .

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?

Copyright 1984, TK Major

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Shame

Don't tread on me -- and don't drag me through the mud of your hatred and greed! 

You want to talk about desecrating the flag of the United States of America?

How about making it a symbol around the world of rape, murder, corruption, greed, and wanton destruction?

It’s apparently easy for some to say, The world is wrong and we are right…

It rolls from their tongue. It’s second nature for them to blame the other guy because they seem to know in their heart of hearts that they are always right.

Maybe they think God talks to them and tells them what they do and think is right, like the current president of our great nation, certain in his own inerrancy as only a self-appointed messiah can be.

History is strewn with the twisted stories of these people who commit the most heinous crimes against man and nature and God with the apparent certainty that they are right and the world is wrong.

Yet those oblivious to the lessons of history — and certainly our current national leadership seem manifestly incapable of learning any lessons at all — doom themselves to repeat that sad history.

When they only harm themselves, I guess that’s their business.

But when they drag our flag and our beloved nation through the ignorance, selfishness, filth and hatred in their hearts — they wound us all.

Whether we like it or not, we cannot help but share the shame that they bring us.

Archive.org page
[multiple download/streaming formats]

first AYoS version
second AYoS version

HAVE U EMBRACED THE BEAST?

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do you serve the war machine?
Have you embraced the beast?
Did you trade in your soul for the finer thinsg?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do your taxes buy bullets for fascist death squads?
Have you embraced the beast?
They’ll be coming to your hometown before too long . . .

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?

Copyright 1984
T.K. Major

Flag image courtesy: Free Clipart or Photos: www.ace-clipart.com

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Have You Embraced the Beast?

XXXXX
1984.

Death squads and slaughter in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras… genocide against inconvenient indigenous peoples, murder of labor workers, missionaries, nuns, and priests — paid for, in large part, by US taxpayers with a wink and a nod from our government leaders and our legislators.

This song is not long on subtlety or craft, I’ll admit it.

What it has is no shortage of is corrosive, eat-your-guts-out anger… courtesy of yours truly. That’s pretty much how I walked around during the ’80s… a hard-tempered steel spring coiled tightly inside me, ready to snap. It was a time when the “loyal opposition” were gutless toadies… the spectacle of the Iran-Contra hearings is still burned into my mind.

The relentless covering up of ever-nastier, ever-more shameful secrets, greater crimes against the US Constitution, the US people, and the world, from the government of the popular Ronald Reagan, papered over by trepidatious Democrats…

For every Jack Brooks, there were ten Daniel Inouyes… seemingly ready and eager to pave the way for the presidency of GHW Bush just a few years later. The “investigation” was a disgrace almost as shameless as the offenses it investigated.

Anyhow… it still makes me mad.

HAVE YOU EMBRACED THE BEAST?

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do you serve the war machine?
Have you embraced the beast?
Did you trade in your soul on (for) the finer things?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do your taxes buy bullets for fascist death squads?
Have you embraced the beast?
They’ll be coming to your hometown before too long . . .

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?

(C)1984, TK Major

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