The Good Ol' Days

a poem in response to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's speech at the Munich Security Conference and the US/Israeli war on Iran

Photo by British Library on Unsplash

Listen to an audio recording of The Good Ol’ Days:

Ah, those were the Good Ol’ Days!
When men were men and the West was best,
When America was bold, beautiful and blessed,
When good guys made the rules, when good guys were boss,
And fought wars for democracy that good guys never lost.

Hail, hail to the Good Ol’ Days!
When noble Europeans crossed oceans and seas
In search of land, resources and riches to seize.
With God on their side they conquered and ruled
Over backward, dark-skinned heathens and fools.

Three cheers for the Good Ol’ Days
That for five centuries stretched Europe’s borders,
Imposing upon the world a Christian, capitalist order!
Though land was stolen, women raped and blood shed
It was only the bad guys who ever ended up dead. 

Where, oh where are the Good Ol’ Days?
The halcyon era of exploitation and exploration,
Of empire building and Christian indoctrination,
The days when white man’s burden was to civilize
The earth, its peoples, its waters, its skies?

Gone, gone are the Good Ol’ Days!
How the hell did everything go from bad to worse?
It was that red scourge, that godless communist curse,
And anti-colonial rebellions tearing empires asunder
So that kings and capitalists couldn’t pillage and plunder.

How to bring back those Good Ol’ Days,
With the UN and international law standing in the way,
With the Global South, China, Palestinians wanting a say?
No, America must revive and reclaim without fear
Its God-given right to dominate every last frontier.

Resurrect the Good Ol’ Days
And rise like a phoenix on golden wings of pride
To forge with God’s chosen Israel as our guide
A perfect world aglow with holy virtue and glory
No matter how bloody the wars, how heinous, how gory!

Alas, there shall be no Good Ol’ Days,
Whether supremacist colonialists want to see or not
The corruption, the hubris, the evil, the rot
For no Messiah, no miracle, no saint, no sage
Will stop mankind’s descent into a New Dark Age.

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