A Thousand Suns

[ericadawn16]

Mom and I revisited "A Thousand Suns" by Linkin Park today. It was even more appropriate than I realized. I really recommend everyone to listen to it. It starts with J. Robert Oppenheimer:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.
Mario Savio

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight
Because my conscience leaves me no other choice

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war
This way of settling differences is not just
This business of burning human beings with napalm
Of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows
Of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane
Of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields
Physically handicapped and psychologically deranged
Cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation
You build up hope, but failure's all you've known
Remember all the sadness and frustration
And let it go, let it go.

Iridescent by Linkin Park

God bless us everyone
We're a broken people living under loaded gun

Catalyst by Linkin Park

When you feel you're alone, cut off from this cruel world
Your instinct's telling you to run
Listen to your heart, those angel voices
They'll sing to you, they'll be your guide back home

When life leaves us blind
Love keeps us kind
It keeps us kind

When you've suffered enough, and your spirit is breaking
You're growing desperate from the fight
Remember you're loved, and you always will be
This melody will bring you right back home

When life leaves us blind
Love keeps us kind
When life leaves us blind
Love keeps us kind

The Messenger by Linkin Park

My mom mentioned how when she was young and conservative, people would fight for everything. At the time, she thought they were stupid but now she sees how right they were, how necessary and how much we need this now especially as we lose all those rights they fought and died for when she was young.

I have to admit that part of me was glad that Stephen Colbert's mother wasn't alive to see Scalia undo everything she and her husband had helped to do in the first place.

I fear that there will be a revolution in my lifetime because the more that we fight and even the playing field against ALEC and their masters/servants, the more they clamp down harder and harder. I had hoped that Obama's elections would prevent this but it only seems to have enraged them to force their views on us whether we like it or not. This is not how a functional democracy is run.

Comments

[jackdavfan692.livejournal.com]

We certainly do :(. *Nods* Luckily, some people are doing exactly that, at least when it comes to women's reproductive rights. Now if we'd just broaden that to include the voting rights of African-Americans & other minorities, and in the case of the LGBT community, the right to marry & have that marriage be recognized nationwide, we could possibly make our voices heard. When the whole debacle of the Supreme Court striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act happened, I observed to both my mom & dad that if all three causes--- preservation of women's reproductive rights, preservation of the rights of African-Americans & other minorities to vote, and making gay marriage legal & recognized nationwide--- are brought under one big umbrella provided by, say, the ACLU, and demonstrations are held to protest the reduction and/or denial of the aforementioned things, it would make a huge statement. I'd like to think something like that will happen when people notice all the above and get sick & tired of it, but I don't know :[. I don't have the greatest amount of faith in our fellow Americans, even though we made the right choice in the 2012 election :\.

Yep, I think you're right, unfortunately. *Nods sadly* Either that, or, to share the concern my dad has voiced a few times, a second civil war. What it really comes down to is that the Tea Party nuts, Republican leaders in (mostly) the South & Midwest, and the radical right wing of the GOP all want to return the country to the way it was in the 50's, possibly even earlier than that time period--- an era where women are forced to undergo abortions in back alleys (during or after which they can potentially die), and African-Americans (and additional minorities) can't vote without jumping through figuratively a million hoops in order to do so. Things could get very, very bad if, out of ignorance, apathy, or whatever, we just stand by and allow our rights to be chipped away little by little :/. Hopefully that won't happen, though :[.

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[i-llbedammned.livejournal.com]

I do love that album. It never got as much play as it should have. One of my favorite songs off it is is Waiting For the End simply for the line "The hardest part of ending is starting again."

People do need to fight more, but they are so distracted they never seem to fight. It's very 1984/Brave New World out there.