And we see scenes of war Here, there, everywhere Wars are being fought It is not one global worldwide war It is a series of wars Strung across the planet Not one continent is spared Very few countries are spared Neighbor is fighting neighbor War after war after war is being waged And each one is waged with intensity, with passion, with hatred The passion for war consumes the combatants And they see nothing but their victory The victory is all that matters No price is too high to pay No body count too high No amount of destruction too great Victory at any cost Victory at all cost And these wars are like brush fires spread across the globe It seems that before one is put out Another starts And then another And then another The whole world has gone insane And the violence is reported in the media And is seen as allowable behavior If so-and-so did this to achieve their ends Then so can we And so war spreads and continues to spread And I see smoke rising up from the earth The aftermath of a battle And the smoke darkens the air Day is as dark as dusk And remains so And I see the survivors of the battle Shell-shocked and traumatized Their town, their village, yes their city destroyed The buildings collapsed to rubble Their relatives, friends and neighbors dead All dead And I see this continue over a period of time Decades go by And these wars continue And the media explains in great detail The specific reason for this specific war Its history, its participants And the excuses they give for hating each other so And each war is treated as though it is unique Each one of them is covered by the media As though it were unique The history of the populace is given Their centuries old grievance What triggered this fresh assault And these explanations are given over and over again For each different war And the names of the players change And one cycles through the list of excuses for the war Land, religion, ethnicity And yes the details, the surface details are analyzed Exhaustively by the political experts as they debate How to bring this particular confrontation to an end And as they debate Another war springs up somewhere on the planet And yet another war somewhere else on the planet And the experts look at the superficial details And no one looks at the underlying cause:
Man has gone mad Collective insanity abounds Hatred has been given the nod
Yes, it is all right to kill your neighbor For if the greatest country in the world Can go killing people all over the globe With impunity With no negative consequence They, the greatest of us all Our role models The paragons of virtue and democracy do this And are allowed to do this Then how much more should we Who are considered less advanced How much more free should we be To emulate them and imitate them As they constantly exhort us to Yes! Let us emulate them Yes! Let us have democracy! Yes! Let us have money! Yes! Let us kill whenever and wherever we please!
And so they do And so they do Ceaselessly they do Relentlessly they do Without end they do Until finally the entire globe Looks as though it has suffered a holocaust The entire globe is smoldering in ashes and smoke And the survivors walk around in a stupor and in a haze Eyeing each other Eyeing one and all with suspicion and with dread and with fear And now it is as though the world has come to a standstill The world has come to a stop Most of the wars have been fought out There are a few still being waged here and there But most of the players are spent They are dead. They are wounded. They are broken The cities of both the victor and the defeated Are left as piles of rubble The edifices destroyed Most of the population – of both the victor and the defeated Are dead, or physically broken, or emotionally traumatized And it is so the whole world over The entire globe is in this state The entire planet is defeated The entire planet has been devastated by war No, it was not World War III But it might as well have been The consequences are the same And the planet is eerily silent The air waves are silent The media is not heard It too has been a casualty of the wars And the people are silent Silent they are Stunned they are Not knowing what to do next they are And thus they are ripe for the picking Ripe they are For the snake to come in And complete the job The people have themselves begun