Oh, beautiful for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They're beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since Daddy had to lie
This is the end of the innocence
~ Don Henley & Bruce Hornsby
Don Henley is, of course, an original member of The Eagles, but he has also had a solo career. "The End of the Innocence" was released in 1989 by Henley and was hailed as one of his best. Once again, if you read the lyrics above and thought this was a song about our current national situation, you would be wrong. The "king" to which Henley refers is Ronald Reagan, a President with whom Henley disagreed on many issues.
With a turn of a phrase, a biblical description of the end times is altered in meaning. "Plowshares into swords" is a distortion of "swords into plowshares," providing quite the opposite image and action. It is certainly not difficult to draw a parallel with our current administration, one that increases our military might, builds walls and violates the Constitution to keep out "the other," silences and fires those who disagree, and one by one, undermines our rights as a free people.
Who knows how long this will last
Now we've come so far, so fast
Loss of innocence is not necessarily a bad thing. We've been poisoned by these fairytales. With voter turnout at a 20-year low in 2016 and nearly half of eligible voters choosing to stay home, America slept its way into a national nightmare. The mounting evidence of a country reawakened and re-energized through protest and resistance offers hope. Change will occur. What to do in the meantime?
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence.
Nice Therese. Hornsby's "Defenders of the Flag" is another great one of his. Keep up the great work.
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