Memory in Song (II)

More oddly-prescient musings of Jackson Browne.

“Lives in the Balance”
Jackson Browne
Lives in the Balance

I’ve been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you’ve seen it before
Where a government lies to its people
And a nation lies drifting to war
There’s a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs…

On the radio talk shows and TV
You hear one thing again and again
That the USA stands for freedom
And we’ve come to the aid of a friend.
But who are the ones that we call our friends,
these governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can’t take anymore
So they pick up a gun or a knife or a stone?

And there are lives in the balance
And there are people under fire
And there are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire…

There’s a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that fought in the places
Where we can’t even say the names.
They sell us the President the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us everything from youth to religion
At the same time they sell us our wars.
I wanna know who the men in the shadows are
I wanna hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they’re never the ones to fight and to die.

And there are lives in the balance
And there are people under fire
And there are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire…