How can we continue to sing America The Beautiful?

[kpete]

The Song No Longer Rings True

The sky still blue and spacious
our fields grow golden grains
snow capped mountains
are still viewed in placid reflecting pools
fruits and nuts are upon our trees
but as for brotherhood between the seas
the good has become harder to find
our light has dimmed

They came seeking relief from religious oppression
only to convert and pervert what they found
their freedom meant
the abolishment of the ways of
the new world they had come to
with violence and death
taking more land
there was no self control
no liberty
no real law other than
might made right
for the new people did not honor their god
and were deserving of death

These were not heroes
they did not liberate the peoples of this new land
they showed no mercy
there was nothing noble or divine in their treatment
not of the peoples
nor of the lands that they found

They had a dream
of great alabaster cities
built them
but today
these are filled with empty dilapidated buildings
the homeless
and the violence that built them
tears run down the cheeks
of mothers and fathers losing their sons and daughters
tears are shed by the victims
of the religious extremism that was seeded in those early times

How can we continue to sing America The Beautiful?


http://beejspoetrycorner.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-song-no-longer-rings-true.html

[leftofcool]

1. America is still beautiful

[yeoman6987]

4. 100 percent correct!

[djean111]

2. I cannot make it through "This Land is Your Land", any more.

Makes me cry.

[RKP5637]

3. It needs to be rewritten to match today's oligarchic and bellicose nation. The US is

no longer about us.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. And yet when Woody wrote that song he did not think this land was functionally ours

just actually and rightfully ours. Verses Woody sang include these:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/This_Land.htm

[Brickbat]

6. It's a protest song and a call to action, not a hymn.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. The song is a celebration of the land itself and an aspiration for the nation that lives on it.

It's gorgeous territory and that's not about people. The song contains the repeated prayer
'America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!'

This means that currently selfish gain does stain that banner, the song asks for the grace of God to cure that wrong.
The 'alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears' not in the present but are envisioned 'beyond the years', in a future time.

So I really don't have a problem with aspiring to a more selfless society with less human suffering. Why is that a bad thing in your view?

[chalmers]

8. yeah what a beautiful fucking country