Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage
Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage
Suddenly it's repression, moratorium on rights
What did they think the politics of panic would invite?
Person in the street shrugs -- "Security comes first"

 
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse

 

Callous men in business costume speak computerese
Play pinball with the Third World trying to keep it on its knees
Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea
And the local Third World's kept on reservations you don't see
"It'll all go back to normal if we put our nation first"

 
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse

 

Fashionable fascism dominates the scene
When ends don't meet it's easier to justify the means
Tenants get the dregs and landlords get the cream
As the grinding devolution of the democratic dream
Brings us men in gas masks dancing while the shells burst

 
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse

 

 

Bruce Cockburn

The Trouble with Normal