You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

Governments lie all the time

Well, not just the American government

It's just in the nature of governments

Well, they have to lie

And since they all represent the people, in some sense

They act against the interest of the people

The only way they can hold power, is if they lie to the people

You don't know what I know

You can't see the spreading stain

Of deception, I am cruel to myself

Things will never be the same

If they told people the truth, they wouldn't last very long

I will hold my silence

Like a weapon, in my hand

If I used it, I would murder myself

You could never understand

Columbus came ashore greeted with nothing but niceness

Sailing west in attempt to find gold and spices

Dominated by the Popes and frenzy for ices

The Catholic church expelled Jews and claimed it was righteous

The first man to see land would get a reward

And get a yearly pension for life, clearly from God

A young sailor saw land said, We isn't far

Columbus lied, said he saw it the evening before

They touched ground, they were greeted by the Arawaks

Columbus has them locked up as prisoners in an hour flat

He wanted to find they source of gold and that was that

And when they thought that wasn't fair then he stabbed they back

When there was no more gold, he took slaves instead

And left a quarter million Indians in Haiti dead

The men died in mines, the women died at work

The children died from lack of milk and they died in the dirt

They were just taking advantage of a passive people

They were just being the savages of massive evil

That's the church work, that's the path of massive ego

That's the blood of Abraham being stabbed by the steeple

In 1619, they were patiently waiting

For a ship that carried slaves, it was changing a nation

The white man was cannibal praying to Satan

Hatred contempt a pity of patronization

That's the corner stone, everything racism based in

The Africans had a more advanced civilization

Black was slave, master was white, rationalization

Fifty million dead, that's Western civilization

At first they appeared in the North

And they were helpless in the face of superior force

And all of them were chained together, they really was lost

Racism isn't natural it's merely divorce

Before the slave trade, black was considered distasteful

By the Oxford dictionary, I find it disgraceful

It's not a natural tendency to be bitter and hateful

It's the natural enemy of the critical staple

Slavery grew as the plantation system grew

The reason for that is kinda easily traceable

Society of helpless dependents was capable

Or saying, Fuck a slave master, you in slavery too

Seven slaves were put to death for murdering master

Fear of slave revolt had them developing faster

You a Catalan killer, an elegant bastard

I would burn the white man, while smelling the ashes

From time to time, white man was part of the the resistance

White indentured servants wanted no part of the system

King Philip's war showed that if people would listen

That they can maybe break the complex chain of oppression

Tyranny is tyranny, but that's a concession

But the women, they was treated like that of possessions

Black women had to work 'cause they was abused

That's the white justification of Aryan blues

The next move was to dominate the Mexicans

James Polk dominated them like they was next to kin

He sent Kernel cross to lie to them and let them in

Eleven days later, his skull was crushed, so message sent

We take nothing by conquest that was the Mantra

The military wasn't human, they were just monsters

Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his taxes

Denounced the Mexican was and got locked in shackles

The twentieth century opened, anger reemerged

Reality of ordinary life was being heard

Anarchists and feminists came from factory work

Communism, Socialism, seem to be re-birthed

War is the health of the state is what Bourne said

And if you was born around that time, you was born dead

The Espionage Act had people confused

'Cause it was double talk, and they ain't know how it would be used

Supposedly it was an act against spyin

Dubois knew that that was bullshit and they was lying

Charles Schneck was arrested in Philadelphia

For printing and distributing leaflets 'cause they was helping ya

He was indicted, tried and then found guilty

And spent six months in jail, don't that sound silly?

Had his freedom taken away by his own nation

But there's a lesson, do not submit to intimidation

The act still exists today and this shit is real

Supposedly, Kennedy tried to have that shit appealed

Eugene Debs did ten years for no purpose

He obstructed the recruiting and enlistment service

The post office started taking mail privileges

Of magazines who printed anti-war sentiments

A Socialist names Fairchild had it right

He said that, They can shoot me but they can't make me fight

They sentenced him to a year in jail and that was reckless

Sixty-five thousand men, conscientious objectors

They were sent to army bases to work there

They were treated sadistically and were hurt there

They were strangled with the hemp rope till they collapsed

And officers punched they stomach and they lower back

A garden house was placed on they face with a nozzle

About six inches from them so they couldn't swallow

The war ended in nineteen hundred and eighteen

The government was just trying to wipe the slate clean

Hemingway wrote Farewell to Arms

Dalton Trumbo wrote Johnny Got His Gun

The war was over but they didn't learn they lesson

Twin tactics of control, reform and repression

The patriotic fervor of war had been invoked

That's why the country that you live in is a fucking joke

You cannot be neutral on a moving train

This is a story about the lies that your teacher told you

This is real, actual, factual

No lies in the whole record

If you don't believe me, look it up

I'm trying to share the shit that I learned, with y'all

Do the knowledge

Your government does not care about you

The people in power do not care about you

Understand that

Power to the people

War is like a fix, you know, you can get high on war, We won, We one, and they you look down on the ground again and you need another fix, you need another war.

Why do you think we've had war after war after war after war?

Every war, they say, "This is the end, this is the last war"

In World War 1, they said, " This is the war to end all wars."

And then not long after that was World War 2

And then soon the United States was waging war in Korea,and then Vietnam

If you study history, what you learn is that wars are always accompanied by lies.

Wars are always accompanied by deception.