Singer and songwriter John Stewart has always been best-known in his native California. Aside from his time in the Kingston Trio, his performing career has been relatively low-key. He’s written plenty of hit songs, though, and he has a hard-core following of devoted fans — mostly California-born types like, well…. me.

Anyway, one of Stewart’s songs that keeps running through my mind as I watch the 2006 election campaign is Survivors, which was on his 1975 Wingless Angels album. Here’s the first verse and the chorus:

He broke his back
To put the food on the table
In Columbus Ohio he said to his wife
“I believe that the flag
It was more than a rag
But the outlaws in office
Have shattered my life”

Can you hear me Ohio?
You are the country
You are the nation
You will survive
Can you hear me Ohio?
You are the country
You are the nation
You will survive

Complete lyrics (with chords) here.

Stewart always wrote poetically about the lives and trials of ordinary people. A later verse in Survivors includes these words:

Just keep on plugging
You old nine to five
For you are the heartbeat
That keeps us alive

And this is the point of what I have been thinking as I watch the current election follies and listen to all the crap and mudslinging, as I watch the corruption and hypocrisy in Congress: that no matter what happens in government; no matter who wins which election; no matter who’s in the White House or the Governor’s Mansion; those of who work to put food on the table are the ones who matter.

When you come right down to it, despite the yammer from the ultra-partisan politicians, the overmonied greedheads who want to turn America into a medieval fiefdom they own, and the power-hungry slaverers who hypocritically spout “family values” platitudes to get into office…

We are the Nation.
We will survive.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 19th, 2006 at 9:15 am and is filed under Politics, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.