Do You Think?

I wrote this song in 1985, in my final year of high school, as a protest against Ronald Reagan's presidency, the state of the world in general, and a call to think about what was happening. We recorded it in 1995 with Julia's Rain, and it was released as the final track on the "wonderful broken silence" CD. I've updated it for the 21st century, with new vocals added to the old... sort of a time travel duet with a younger me... and a President who was even worse and more dangerous than Reagan... (with a guest appearance by his Attorney General, John Ashcroft).

"God and Man", Charles Bridge - June, 2009

It's not just a political song, even though the 2010 version was framed through that lens.

In the end, all that counts for me and you
are the things in this life that we say and we do
do you think, do you care
and how do you sleep at night
do you leave on all of your lights
do you think somehow that everything will be all right...
it's not all right.

Sadly, I think it's more relevant today than it was 25 years ago. I'm sure some might call it all progress. I don't.

It's interesting, at least to me, that "socialism" has such a pejorative connotation in the United States (and to a lesser extent, in Canada) - and "communism" is viewed by most as only slightly less evil than the anti-Christ (and often the two are seen as the same thing). Indeed, a politically right wing UFO researcher asked me last year, while we were both on a radio show together, how I could be a communist (after I had been purposefully tweaking him with some leftist rhetoric, most of which I actually believed, but not all of it). I just looked at him and said, "with the world in the shape its in, the question isn't why someone would be a communist; the question is why someone wouldn't."

And having said that, I recommend this, and this, and say this: labels are so 20th century. The 21st century demands more.

Paul Kimball