No Need To Protest Once They're Done

It’s hard for them to miss what they were too young to have ever seen

There’s just no sense in protecting anything that’s been gone so long already

Once they’ve disappeared there’s no need to fight over their extinction

Won’t have to try and save it if it was bulldozed so many years ago

There’s no point in boycotting that new Wal*Mart once the doors are open

Ain’t no way to stop this self-destructive process that we know simply and surely as progress

They aren’t going to get worked up over your old and faded pictures

It won’t matter anymore, anyway, when nobody else remembers

Once it’s been so hot for a hundred years no one alive will know any better

Just bulldoze those native artifacts and keep the work on schedule

Soon you won’t even be able to imagine how this all was before we came

They’ll say, ‘There’s no way you could have ever swam in this awful river’

No need now to preserve what’s been paved beneath this parking lot

Who cares that, over there, was where we used to keep our horses

Won’t make a bit of difference anyway, after a couple million years

No sense in arguing after all the trees are cut

Anyway, there’s still a few of them left, over at the zoo

Don’t have to file suit now since that marsh has been all drained

Forget about the bag limits, all the good fish are gone and the rest are full of poison

Why, they never even took the time to listen to all them songbirds, anyhow

No need for public hearings once it’s been graded flat and all paved over

It’s probably just always been really noisy around here, in any case

Can’t let the bears live too near our kids in their happy new backyards

It’s hard for them to try and restore what they neither created nor destroyed

Once we’ve broken ground there’s never any more objections

So, what actually was the point, in the way it was before

No way that this was ever just quiet rural farmland, in any case

When we are done, nobody will even listen to those squishy whiners

They won’t fight for things now gone, so far beyond their imaginations

Once we’re done extracting, there’s no profit whatsoever in restoration

Now that there’s this new road through here, why not add just a strip mall alongside?

After that, some cheap apartments over there won’t make any difference, anyhow

It’s gonna happen one way or another, so might as well get in on the money

They can fix up their little yards if they really need to try and make a difference

Now that it’s gone it’s just some NewAge fairytale to be dismissed with raucous, scornful laughter

No need to get offended now, it’s all been settled in accordance with our laws and tradition