Over There—George M. Cohan

#365Songs: August 1

This #365Songs series is about recommending songs. So the presumption is that we think you’ll like the song, that we want you to hear it, and that we think it will become part of your life the way it’s been part of ours.

Except that’s not what this recommendation is about.

This recommendation is about listening to something to help you understand something.

It’s to help you understand that if this country was a person, it would be a violent, sociopathic narcissist with too little education to know when it’s being tricked into violence. A dim-witted, playground bully too hormone-addled to know that it’s miserable. A dopamine-addicted proto-fascist crying for another cheer of the crowd.

Johnnie get your gun, get your gun, get your gun,
Take it on the run, on the run, on the run;
Hear them calling you and me;
Every son of liberty.
Hurry right away, no delay, go today,
Make your daddy glad, to have had such a lad,
Tell your sweetheart not to pine,
To be proud her boy’s in line.

But America, love it or leave it. Right?

Well, I didn’t ask to be born here, and I didn’t ask for things to go the way they have. Still, I was born here, and I don’t have the money to do much about it, so here I stay, and I’ll complain and vote all I damn want, thank you very much.

I didn’t ask for corporate capitalism. I didn’t ask for a false democracy. I didn’t ask for a proto-Fascist, post-Protestant autocracy.

But I didn’t get to vote on that, did I?

Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there,
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming everywhere.
So prepare, say a prayer,
Send the word, send the word to beware,
We’ll be over, we’re coming over,
And we won’t come back till it’s over over there.

I certainly didn’t get to vote on our $820 billion military budget.

And I didn’t get to vote on that $1 billion weapons sale to Israel.

Or that $2.3 billion we spent on the war in Afghanistan.

Johnnie get your gun, get your gun, get your gun,
Johnnie show the Hun, you’re a son-of-a-gun,
Hoist the flag and let her fly,
Like true heroes do or die.

A son of a gun.

That’s what we are, isn’t it, when we’re born boys in this country?

Sons of guns.

Not me, motherfucker. My mom and dad are pacifists. There’s never been a gun in any house I’ve ever lived in. Not in Oakland. Not in Chicago. Not in Brooklyn.

Pack your little kit, show your grit, do your bit,
Soldiers to the ranks from the towns and the tanks,
Make your mother proud of you,
And to liberty be true.

I was in high school when we bombed Libya and people started talking about there being a draft. My parents sent me to school with a black band on my arm and told me they’d send me to Canada before they’d let me go to war.

Did you know that 16.7 million firearms were sold in the U.S. in 2023? Even better, approximately 4.8 million of them went to first-time gun buyers.

So, yeah, we’re getting stupider and more violent all the time.

Here’s another great financial statistic for you:

“According to Everytown for Gun Safety, gun violence costs the United States $557 billion annually, which is about 2.6% of the country’s GDP. This is more than double the amount the Department of Education spent on educating US youth in 2022.”

Brilliant.

Johnny,[a] get your gun, get your gun, get your gun.
Take it on the run, on the run, on the run.
Hear them calling you and me,
Every Son of Liberty.

Sons of Liberty, eh?

Sons of guns. Sons of liberty.

Do you know what’s written on the Statue of Liberty? Hopefully, you do. But just in case you don’t, it’s a poem called “The New Colossus,” written by Emma Lazarus. It goes a little something like this:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Did you know that in the US, more than half of gun-related deaths are suicides?

So prepare, say a prayer,
Send the word, send the word to beware –
We’ll be over, we’re coming over,
And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.

Ah, prayer.

Are you familiar with the Amalekites? Arguably the first genocide in the Bible.

Here’s another delightful statistic for you:

“Nearly 500,000 military personnel died during the U.S. Civil War. That’s almost half of all Americans who have ever died during wartime.”

Yeah, you read that right. We die most when we’re killing ourselves.

In other words, it ain’t happenin’ “over there.”

It’s happenin’ right here.

~

Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article!