Doggerel for Escalation.

A song for the war season. One critic, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that "This is great art, certainly, and of political import..."

"I Am Changing My Name To Lyndon"

[To the tune of “I’m changing my name to Chrysler” by Tom Paxton.]

[With many deep apologies to Tom Paxton. Some wide swaths of lyrics were stolen outright from him. Plagiarism, of course, is a crucial part of what Pete Seeger has called the "folk process."]

Oh, the price of gold is rising out of sight,
And GDP is in sorry shape tonight.
What charisma used to get us
Now won't get a head of lettuce.
No, my political future isn't bright.
But amidst the clouds I spot a shining ray,
I begin to glimpse a new and better way.
I’m finally getting traction,
Worked it down to the last fraction,
And it’s going into action here today:

Chorus:
I am changing my name to Lyndon,
In my White House down in Washington D.C.
I will tell that War-hawk salon,
That “what we did to Saigon
Would be perfectly acceptable to me.”
I am changing my name to Lyndon,
I am toeing the Wise Men’s Party Line.
When we blow a billion grand there,
And troops rush in without a pray’r,
Yes sir, they’ll be mine.

When the voters come screaming for my head,
Asking “why not health and welfare instead?”
They may try to yell and holler,
Since we wasted their last dollar.
As endless streams of Afghans turned up dead.
I’ll be glad to tell my troops what to do.
It’s a matter of a thousand lives or two.
It’s not mere colonization;
It’ll spread our civilization,
Makes me wish my terms number’d more than two.

Chorus.

Since the first amphibian crawled out of the slime,
We've been struggling in an unrelenting climb.
We were hardly up and walking
Before money started talking,
And contribut’d to campaigns all the time.
It's been that way a century or three;
Now it seems there is something new to me.
If you're a imperial Titanic
And your failure is gigantic,
The Pentagon will hang you on a tree.

Chorus.