“Age of Intolerance” lyrics/notes/epigraph
lyrics
We’re in an age of intolerance, though we don’t like describing it that way.
But it’s still an age of intolerance: conform, submit, repent, and obey.
A woman posts a clumsy joke before she boards a plane, a thing a smarter person might avoid.
We all come crashing down on her just like it’s Judgement Day. By the time she lands her life has been destroyed.
What good did it do to punish her so severely?
It didn’t do no good to anyone.
But in a mob nobody sees too clearly,
and being blind in mobs is so much fun.
So we’ve got an Age of Intolerance. Be careful what you say and think about,
and pray to God you’re not in error. Repent or prepare to be rubbed out.
We are the good people. Ours is the one true way. Our neighbors must be punished for their sins.
Call them out and expose them when they step out of line, that’s how total justice-ocracy begins.
What good does it do to police each other so stridently?
It doesn’t do no good to anyone.
In olden days it seems that people could agree to disagree —
now heaven knows: nothing goes.
There will surely come an end to this moral panic glitch
when the pendulum swings back like they always do.
And you’ll start to see the flaw in being hunted like a witch
as soon as it starts happening to you (and yes you will, and yes it will.)
Then you can dream of a free society,
which Adlai Stevenson defined
as one in which it’s safe to be unpopular,
but as of now we’ve got nothing of the kind.
Till that day comes, we’ll choose intolerance,
cause tolerance was more than we could stand,
and in our Age of Intolerance: conform or be forever banned.
— © and (p) 2018 Dr Frank, Itching Powder Music (BMI)
epigraph
Both the conservatives and the progressives seem to me to be full of the same kind of intolerance, arrogance, empty-headedness, and to be dominated by different kinds of conformism; in either case the dread of being left out of their reference group. — Thomas Merton, Journals.
