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

Criminal Capitalist Success Stories

I sold worthless disaster insurance policies at decaying trailer parks filled with meth labs

My business was chemical disposal but we just dumped the stuff in the woods at night

We bought the insurance policies of desperate cancer victims for pennies on the dollar

Our factory made baby formula from arsenic-tainted well water laced with melamine and chalk

I relieved them of their hard-earned cash by simply playing to their overwhelming greed

I knew about the 300 houses to be built right next door but the good family buyers did not ask

We bought condos with no down payment, rented them out and never paid back a cent

We sealed them in cargo ship freight containers and warned them not to make a sound

I made his martyr video for Allah but somehow the explosive vest detonated early, killing only him

Our miracle fat melting pill sold well until the feds forced us to close down and start over once again

We came up with a clear liquid that we claimed increased gas mileage by 40%

They outlawed exporting raw timber so we just shaved the bark and kept shipping it right on out

I profited selling off tracts in the country’s first national park after all the lumber had been removed

We stole the identities of the homeless whose beating deaths got a paragraph in the paper

We would trick old women into signing house notes that they could never hope to repay

People loved the specials I stirred up using puppies I got for free from the Lost and Found

I specialized in scraping huge fees from other people’s pain and suffering settlements

My firm contracted out insiders and ex-legislators to lobby for any cause that would pay us

We recruited the street corner illegales and shorted them at least 20% every day

We built giant SUVs, ORVs and dirt bikes and proudly said that’s what the people wanted

We made fortunes as military contractors as our government ginned up terrible enemies

We made vast sums on credit cards, steering consumers into negative savings rates

I profited greatly acting as a middleman for those desperate enough to sell their internal organs

We sold patriotic plastic decal flags made at toxic-vapor-filled sweatshops overseas

We moved our 50 year old company’s headquarters to Bermuda to save on taxes

We closed and abandoned our domestic factories leaving behind poisoned messes

We entered bankruptcy so we could renege on all our pension and bond obligations

We outsourced all our production to China but jealously guarded our American brand name

We worked them 14 hours per day for six days every week

We crammed them 20 to a room without any running water

They were exposed to every kind of poisonous industrial chemical there was

We paid off the local officials to allow us to continue dumping every night

We set their goals and just took the profits and later denied any knowledge at our trials

I had another credit card so I kept on playing knowing that my luck would change

Once they declared us too big to fail we knew we were still in the driver’s seat

Our merger formula always included layoffs, benefit cuts, offshoring and fat bonuses for us

I was drinking heavily and could not hold an honest job but then father paid my way into politics

We charged them $1500 to help them with their debts and never talked to them again

I kept my whores high and pimped them until they grew too sickly and unattractive

We did 4 or 5 pyramid schemes and bought a Hummer to pull our big new speed boat

I misappropriated all their donations and blamed it on the fundamentalist insurgents

She would not sleep with me so I had her fired and had them deny her unemployment

My lawyer told them that I welcomed the opportunity to prove my innocence

Industry supporters drafted me a statement calling for further study, which we never did

They had me label them as dead-enders and we continued passing out fat arms contracts

We enriched the dictators as long as they allowed our donors to export their resources

We all made big money ruining their lives with these fancy mortgage derivative schemes

His widow paid me to handle the details so I collected his checks and used up all his credit

Population growth assured us cheap unskilled labor to maintain our artificial prosperity

We became rich heroes burying the country’s best farmland beneath sweatshop factories

We produced nothing but poisonous, throwaway plastic shit, all of it strictly for export

It was cheaper to pay off local officials than to comply with the new environmental regulations

I paid them pennies for their hand work and exhorted them to be proud of their great culture

We hopped gleefully aboard clean energy by re-branding our coal strip-mining solution as green

We had them call for market-driven healthcare but made them disallow volume discounts

We sold their trusting asses guaranteed annuities backed by nothing but our empty advertising

We flooded their valley villages for UN funded hydro but they sold the power to foreign lands

I labeled them as terrorists and split up the aid funds from the CIA among my cronies

We set up customer support so that everyone waited at least 5 minutes, hearing horrible music

We avoided regulation, ran amok and then secured no-string bailouts by blackmailing the markets

We were able to deny responsibility by noting that we had outsourced foreign ingredients

We produced overseas, saving big with fairly good quality and hardly raised our prices

We prospered putting more into advertising and doctor payoffs than researching new drugs

Somehow I landed this cushy liaison job at Exxon-Mobil after my stint over at the EPA

It was sheer genius to call for Personal Responsibility after the layoffs and benefit cancellations

We found that soft music and images of children worked for arms producers as well as candidates

We profited greatly from a green ad campaign, muted packaging and a 25% price increase

We had our political lackeys denounce it as junk science and halt regulation for more research

Our foreign-flagged fleet strip-mined the oceans but our ads showed frolicking dolphins

We convinced them we required massive yearly bonuses to avoid total financial meltdown

We advertised that we fed the world as we drove small farmers to bankruptcy and suicide

I retired rich to my locked compound and supervised the writing of my wise and folksy memoirs

There’s No Hiding From Our Own Advances

You’ll have to breathe what’s in the air to live more than about ten short minutes

You can’t avoid the dirty things smeared about as you fall towards the ground

There’s no real ignoring the poverty enjoyed by most everybody here

You’ll always have to hear the un-muffled trucks pounding by in their clumsy and ignorant glee

The jets will still be floating so far and wide above you, all so safe and clean

You must drink the water sometime, from a source that you will just have to trust

Unbidden solicitations will assault you, from all directions, at every moment

The food that you must eat to sustain you may poison you all at once, or over time

There’s no hiding from their bulldozers, earthmovers or giant noisy dump trucks

You can’t avoid the angry crowds from the swarming plague of overpopulation

This next upcoming pandemic will be an important milestone in your short time

You’ll experience the warmest years in recorded history, for the rest of your life

There will be a chance to contemplate the vehicles standing idle for lack of fuel

You can watch videos of empty factories for which they once destroyed good farmland

You will observe with amazement how quickly the skein of civilization can unravel

There’s no avoiding the filthy mud and yet there’s no way to clean your shoes

We can all learn to go to sleep dirty once again and wake up scratching and hungry

There’s no hiding from the all-pervasive propaganda of the competing cults of personality

You must endure the pounding of giant helicopter blades, far too close for comfort

His self-appointed representatives on here earth will drive His Will deep into your brain

Happiness will come much easier and center upon food, clothing and shelter

There’s no hiding from the toxic fugitive dust in any of our so-called great cities

You will be martyred in a jihad you do not understand for a promised place in some fuzzy heaven

Once the conglomerates have used you up, you will never work again

Watch as everything but military spending is pared back to next to nothing

Observe with incredulity the vast array of perverse crimes that make up the news

Don’t try to avoid every pothole or you’ll never get to where you must be going

There’s no hiding all your symptoms from the many problems you did not create

Darkness In Their Light

They bought items made and shipped from far away and they saved really big

Their jobs disappeared and others worked as slaves unable to afford what they made

Her bathrooms were always so clean and shiny and safe

Her antiseptic cleansers biologically selected the strongest pathogens for survival

He awoke in the Saturday darkness and drove far to the wilderness

At the trailhead to the lofty summit were already parked more than 50 cars

His lush green and manicured lawn was the envy of his good neighbors

It leached precious water loaded with eutrophifying fertilizer and toxic pesticides

They pointed, clicked and texted their way far out into the vast reaches of cyberspace

They rejected organized learning and spelling and syntax and grammar also eluded them

The country saved money eliminating preventative social and health programs

They ignored that required new jails and emergency services proved even more expensive

The president emerged, firm in his beliefs, after talks with his personal savior

The imams were unbending in their narrow interpretations of their infallible Koran

They had real jobs cutting down trees those foolish tourists spent money just to see

When they were done there were no longer any jobs because no more stupid tourists came

They counted on an increasing population to pay the debts of their wondrous times

Subsequent generations lived in ignorant poverty on a shattered and overcrowded planet

He enjoyed his pricey morning latte and needed to get out for lunch in his new car

At 50 his services were no longer required and he realized he had saved nothing at all

They clamored for freedom and local control of their natural resources

Outside developers bought them out for pennies and built empty, gated second homes

They spent trillions building the most powerful military the world had ever known

Their greatest threat was a scraggly band in sandals that eluded them for years

They realized they could no longer stay the course

But they knew well that they must never cut and run

Executive perqs and compensation increased some sixteenfold

Meanwhile, real worker spending power declined by nearly 12%

They flocked to their beloved seashore to raise families and retire in the sand

They drained the wetlands, eroded the beaches and polluted the ocean with their wastes

She was uninjured after missing the stop sign due to her kids and her cellphone

But that compact economy car was destroyed - Thank god giant SUVs are so very safe

He could quote movie stars and commercials as well as a myriad of sports trivia

As he lay dying he finally realized his own thoughts were few and unconsidered

The dam provided inexpensive electricity and eliminated the threat of floods

The rich silt no longer fertilized the valley farms and fishing livelihoods were lost

The industry advisors spoke with one voice regarding the country’s energy policy

Their society was left supporting terrorists with every tank of gas they wasted

She took great care of herself, watched her diet and did not drink

She died thin and pretty and having not recognized anyone for more than twenty years

Ancient traditions had sustained their Asian society for several millennia

In a rush to modernization they lost their culture and destroyed their environment

Concentrating all week on those two short days off from the endless work to come

But every weekend was lost just the same in a dusty, noisy, swirling blur

Always fighting deadlines and following tight and pressured schedules

They finished way late without any fanfare because, in reality, no one really cared

Sensing the creator everywhere from all his works so close at hand

Swallowing dusty scripture without masticating, like little black pills of literal truth

Springing from the void into mother’s warmth and safety

Ascending into paradise or maybe just decaying into dust once again