Bad Americans

By Nathan Payne | pablosmoglives | 12 Sep 2022

An interesting snapshot of the zeitgeist of the Bush years, when liberals were still interested in dissent and 9/11 truth, "Bad Americans" is from my 2008 album Blinded By Self-Righteous Degenerates. At the time, it was still considered an indictment of someone's character to call them a "bad American" (Team America: World Police takes the idea to its amusing extreme). Now, the word "American" has supposedly absorbed the word "bad," so that they're one in the same.

Well, goody good for them. But not for me they're not.

If you were one of the 100,000 people with whom I marched down Sunset Blvd. in March of 2003 to protest the invasion of Iraq, an issue which was fundamentally tied to 9/11 truth, I'd like to ask you, who are the bad Americans now?

#neverforget

Bad Americans

close those windows
the grass is green but it never grows
I’m not all there and it kinda shows
am I supposed to feel unlucky?

girls, girls,
everywhere,
in my suitcase, in my hair
they’re so pretty but I don’t care
cuz I love you

she can’t be bought, she can’t be beat
baby put on your favorite feet
there’s a gasoline fire on a dead-end street
we’re goin’ dancin’ tonight

my soda-pop turns into blood
I’m a neon stick in the neon mud
I got the Freedom Flu, and I nearly drowned
in a flood of fascist infrastructure

throw your body on the fire
is it officer, or offi-sire?
all these kingdom-cumshots make me tired
whatever happened to
serve & protect?

who’s your favorite candidate?
way too little, way too late
we all voted for a different fate
there is no lesser of 2 evils…

dinner by the dashboard lamp
I found Jesus Christ in a FEMA camp
and a champion chick-magnet
handin’ out pamphlets
on the sly

some will shout,
and some will scream
life is a dead policeman’s dream
buried in a stretch-mark limousine,
an unmarked grave on the cover of a magazine

let’s take this war from the top
if it can’t be won,
can it be stopped?
it don’t matter whose dogma you adopt,
the fight is in the street

one by one, and two by four
the pigs come burstin’ through the door
I don’t care who they think they’re doin’ it for,
they’re Bad Americans

their power is not real
that’s why they work so hard
to make you feel
that they’re the ones
in control
if they were in control
and their power was true
they’d share it all
with me and you,
so the next time they got you down in the hole,
say, officer,
you can kill my body,
but can you save my soul?
tell ‘em!
you can kill my body
but you cannot save my soul