Lives in the Balance

Listen while you read:  https://youtu.be/Ms5J2U_ySdI

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 a people

And a country is drifting to war

And 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 the T.V.

You hear one thing again and again

How the U.S.A. stands for freedom

And we 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 any more

And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone

There are lives in the balance

There are people under fire

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 are fought in 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 every thing from youth to religion

The same time they sell us our wars

I want to know who the men in the shadows are

I want to 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 or to die

And there are lives in the balance

There are people under fire

There are children at the cannons

And there is blood on the wire

~  Jackson Browne

Yesterday I was telling a friend about what I recall is the first big concert I took my son to. It was October 13, 2004. Sam, who'd lost his father less than two years earlier, was twelve. Dear friends Jim and Lois took my kids and me to Continental Airlines Arena (now called The Meadowlands) in East Rutherford NJ for the next-to-the-last "Vote for Change" concert. Election Day was looming ahead, and most of us felt pretty confident that John Kerry would win over George W. Bush. Well, that didn't happen. But 19,800 people gathered at the Arena to make some noise about war, about freedom, about what America is supposed to be. We listened to Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, John Fogerty, and Jackson Browne.

We had nosebleed seats, and I remember that Sam, unaccustomed to these large venues, was a little dizzy climbing up to our seats. But the more important memory that I retain from that event over a dozen years ago was that Sam was really moved by Jackson's performance of "Lives in the Balance." He was a twelve-year-old kid, and he got it.

"Lives in the Balance" appears on the album of the same name, released in 1986. While Jackson was writing lyrics against the Reagan agenda and specifically, the conflict in Nicaragua, it should be obvious to you that these lyrics could as easily be applied to our conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the current state of affairs in this country.

My parents both served in WWII. My two nephews also served, one of them as a member of the 82nd Airborne, the other in Desert Storm. While I respect and honor their service, I have never been understanding of war. I'm a liberal, peace-loving, hippie dove. We are all familiar with the sobering statistic of 58,220 deaths of U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War. The war in Afghanistan claimed 20,904 deaths, and the Iraq War claimed another 36,710. And here we are, saber-rattling again, dropping the Mother of All Bombs in Afghanistan, threatening North Korea, "sending a message" to Assad in Syria with 59 Tomahawk missiles. When (and where and how) does it all end?

In 2018, there will be another opportunity to "Vote for Change" in the mid-term elections. My prayer is that change will come. Because there are, indeed, lives in the balance.