world peace is none of your business
you must not tamper with arrangements
work hard and simply pay your taxes
never asking what for
oh, you poor little fool
oh, you fool
world peace is none of your business
police will stun you with their stun guns
or they’ll disable you with tasers
that’s what government’s for
oh, you poor little fool
oh, you fool
world peace is none of your business
so would you kindly keep your nose out
the rich must profit and get richer
and the poor must stay poor
oh, you poor little fool
oh, you fool
each time you vote you support the process.
each time you vote you support the process.

morrissey 

i was thinking about that every time one of the kids said we will vote you out. i'd like to believe it. they really seem to. but they will have to find someone who doesn't work for the oil companies and the n.r.a. and the global arms trade. each time they said we will vote you out i wondered who they might vote in. 

walking this morning i wrote in my phone, i can see the day when kids ask the question lurking behind the gun control fight, why is the jrotc in school, training school shooters with weapons of war. the last shooter was trained by the government to kill in a shooting range inside the margorie stoneman school. and when they ask that question i can see their brains working, making connections. why is this country at war with the world? who is it for?

***
So what if we vote, all us “poor little fools”? Who cares? Our majority opinion doesn’t matter much when popular democracy has been blown to bits by concentrated wealth that is always concentrated power, and we’ve all been trained to restrict the expression of our purported popular sovereignty to candidate-centered, big money, big media, major party, electoral pageants once every two or four years.

World peace is none of our business. Neither is corporate welfare, jobs, health insurance, pensions, the environment, tax policy, the drawing of voting districts, campaign finance, the distribution of wealth and income, the structure of work and the labor process, wages or labor rights.
And neither is the freedom of ordinary people—all us poor little fools and our poor little foolish children—to not be massacred by sociopaths armed to the teeth with military-style weapons in our streets, schools, workplaces, concert halls, churches, shopping malls, lecture halls, movie theaters and parks.

Gun control is none of our business. Freedom from gun violence in our communities is none of our business. The gun manufacturers and gun-sellers must profit and get richer. The populace must be mortally weaponized against itself, encouraged to crouch further into atomized self-defense units, carrying concealed and open means of mass homicide to justify the emergence of an ever more fascistic police state and keep the commoners too divided and scared to join hands for the common good.

paul street,
truthdig.