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about

It took a week following the unthinkable electoral-college anointment of a hate-spewing nativist to the most powerful post on the planet for this song to burst out of me. It was hard to wake up to the realization that (a minority of) voters chose to empower a vengeful tycoon-tyrant-toddler, a strongman-wannabe, a thug — and with him we get a coterie of like-minded punishers intent on beating the country into submission.

This song goes a little way toward expressing the deep-rooted disgust I feel at my fellow Americans who would choose hate and divisiveness over empathy and progress. Yeah, maybe not everyone knew what they were doing, or the serious consequences of their votes (though I have my doubts). They’re still accessories to the crime. Regardless, we're all gonna find out just how fucked we are, sooner rather than later.

We live in the aftermath of a coup d'état, and things are moving fast — faster than a bile-filled, short-fingered tweet-storm. Long-held civic norms have been obliterated. And it’s bound to get worse before it gets better. This song has already undergone changes to try to keep up. It'll probably undergo more.

I lived through Thatcher and Reagan and Bush I and II and have seen the effects of other right-wingers who have come to power talking populism yet whose real goal was the aggrandizement of themselves and their enablers at the expense of the citizens they claim to serve. I believe nothing they say. Instead, check out what they do, to whom they do it and how.

Then ask yourself just how safe you feel, living in a nation run by thugs.

-Robi

lyrics

We have to stop this merry-go-round
Have to escape the circus, extricate from the clowns

Haven't you been listening?
Haven't you been paying attention?

Where did you lose your humanity?
That's just the price you pay for the bullshit that you believe

You lie in bed at night
Now that you've sold your soul
Under the sheets so white

Hide your face under the pillow case
Cutting out eye holes in your pillow case

Thug Nation, Thug Nation
I don't want to hear your explanation
Thug Nation, Thug Nation
Everybody's getting an invitation
Thug Nation, Thug Nation
They're counting on your participation
Thug Nation, Thug Nation
Cos you don't wanna wind up in a concentration camp

I see you on your high-wire act
Working without a net you can't tell fiction from fact

You lie in bed at night
What do you tell yourself
They march in broad daylight

You hope they're looking for someone else
You know they're looking for no one else

Thug Nation, Thug Nation
Trumped up charges, incarcerations
Thug Nation, Thug Nation
Executive orders, deportations
Thug Nation, Thug Nation
Why resent when you can hate them
Thug Nation, Thug Nation
Making it great for American racism

Thug Nation, Thug Nation
I don't want to hear your explanation
Thug Nation, Thug Nation
They're counting on your participation
Thug Nation, Thug Nation
You never should have opened their invitation
Thug Nation, Thug Nation
Everybody's heading to the concentration camp

credits

from [ samizdat​-​001 ] Thug Nation, released July 15, 2017
Words and music © 2017 Robi Polgar

Kelly J. Rath — guitars, vocals
Robi Polgar — guitars, vocals

Recorded at Alta Vista Recording, Austin, TX; April to July, 2017.
Mixed by Josh Allen; mastered by Tom Johnson.

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all rights reserved

tags

about

Robi Polgar Austin, Texas

Robi Polgar is a musician, writer, director and unrepentant soccer junkie, living in Austin.

He is one-half of the guitarist-singer-songwriter duo The Study Session (with Kelly J. Rath) and the frontman for Brit-Poppers The Late Joys.

Mr. P pens, plucks and performs punchy political paeans with a deft left hook and massive progressive undercut.

More: www.robipolgar.com/music.html
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