Failed State - David Rovics

Composed by：David Stefan Rovics

When you're working two jobs

And living in a tent

When a house costs a million

Bucks and you can't pay the rent

When politicians say they'll

Help but it keeps getting worse

Each time the landlord lobby

Pulls the strings of the purse

When the human right to housing

Isn't even part of the debate

You know you're living in a failed state

When millions of citizens

Are spending half their lives

Locked up in a prison for

Trying to survive

When laws must be broken

Just to have a place to stay

When the prisons pay the

Senators to look the other way

If you have to be a criminal

To put food upon your plate

You know you're living in a failed state

When you're facing climate breakdown

When the trees are all on fire

When half the country's underwater

When a climate change denier

Runs the nation

And the opposition party

Votes for oil rigs and pipelines

This is not so much a

Country as it is a corporation

Buckling under it's weight

You know you're living in a failed state

When your nation is an

Empire facing daily blowback

And the only thing your

Leaders can think to do is attack

Bipartisan consensus that we need to spend

Seven-hundred billion before the year's end

On a military budget to 'make America great'

You know you're living in a failed state

When almost every day some psycho with a gun

Has to open fire on a crowd before it's done

When a music festival becomes a free-fire zone

And all they can say is

It's okay he was acting alone

Buy some armor pray to God

And hide behind a gate

You know you're living in a failed state

You know you're living in a failed state

You know you're living in a failed state