There’s a sign on the wall. There’s always a wall. There’s always a sign on it. The walls are owned by the wealthy and the politicians take turns posting the signs. Those signs tell us who's a "serious" candidate and who isn't, who should be heard and who should be ignored, who matters and who doesn't. As this rigged game goes on and on, as another "election" approaches, we're all expected to be grateful for the opportunity to vote for another Bush, for another Clinton, for more of the same wrapped up in a shiny new package.
Bernie Sanders understands that the signs we need to see are not on those walls. They’re in the secret pages of the TPP, in the catastrophic consequences of Citizens United, in the ruin of the dying economies all around us, in the empty eyes of the riot police who surround anyone who dares to tell the truth. Those signs are everywhere, posted by Reality and written in pain. The earth itself is warning us, of fracking and fossil fuel addiction, of poisoned rivers and carbon emissions, of species extinction and polar cap melting, of plutocrat pipelines and the death of the oceans.
There's a feeling I get
When I look to the west,
And my spirit is crying for leaving.
Because profit is all that matters in this "Christian" nation, because there's always another war on the way, because the truth has been sentenced to life in prison without parole. No meaningful action has been taken against catastrophic climate change or massive inequality because the people who control the "government" and corporate media machine of this pig circus of corruption that used to be America decide what gets attention and what doesn't, decide what is reported and what isn't, decide who is heard and who isn't.
Well massive inequality has done some deciding too. It’s pounding on the doors of America, it’s pounding on the doors of Europe, it’s pounding on the doors of Asia, it’s standing on the doorstep of the world with centuries of oppression behind it and the fire of karma in its eyes, it is going to come calling with a very loud final word for the politicians before all the lights go out and all those walls come crashing down . . .
PLEASED TO MEET YOU. HOPE YOU GUESS MY NAME.
Those more and better Democrats I keep hearing about always tell us they just need a little more time to stop the exploitation and the poisoning and the drilling, but they've been given plenty of time, they've been given more than enough majorities to stop this savage corporate assault on working people, to put an end to this relentless abuse of the earth itself and the skies above it. The masters of corporate capitalism have been playing with fire, it's all those arsonists ever do, it's all they've ever done, and too many Democrats keep handing them the matches. We've seen their handiwork, we've seen the fires igniting, we've seen the rings of smoke drifting through the trees, but no one in power ever listens to progressives.
Or to songwriters.
In 1971, Robert Plant wrote a song about the threat of greed and materialism, about saving the environment, about a stairway to heaven. He knew it can’t be bought with gold, it can’t be purchased with corporate cash, it can’t be acquired by the highest bidder and privatized for profit. It’s not for sale.
Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow?
And did you know?
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.
Your stairway, our stairway, the stairway of We the People is still out there, waiting for us to climb it. It can still be found, it can still be climbed, it can still lead us to reason.
That’s why it’s there.
It’s been more than forty years, but there’s still a tree by a brook, that songbird is still alive and it's still singing, there’s still a whisper of redemption in the wind, maybe there’s still time to change the road we’re on . . .
Bernie Sanders for President