I looked up the Wikipedia article about the song. "Solidarity Forever" which was written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915 and sung to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic." I expected that it would be a dated, embarrassing bit of historical anachronism with little application to our modern situation. Well, guess what. It's pretty damn timely. Especially the line, "They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn / But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn."
Kind of makes you think about the rich getting richer and everyone else getting poorer... about derivatives, subprime mortgages, bailouts, and broken promises to help distressed homeowners in the midst of a staggering unemployment rate caused by Wall Street greed and maintained by browbeating our lawmakers to avoid reform.
Reform is Big Government. We can't have that. That's Communism, you know. It "kills jobs" (as if making thousands of federal and state employees lose their jobs is all right).
Meanwhile the consumer is blamed for the sluggish economy. We need to get our "confidence" back. Well, recall that "confidence" is the basis of the word "con."
Maybe we ought to add a few more verses to cover our current situation. I'll suggest a line: "They tell us it's our job to spend to keep us all afloat, while they take the wealth to buy themselves another fancy boat."
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