So, I was reading some of the accounts of the RNC protests over at the Minnesota Independent, and one of their articles had this:
Best sing-along: “We all live in a fascist police state” to the tune of “Yellow Submarine,” sung on the John Ireland Bridge as cops arrested hundreds of people.
I tend to be of the opinion that the best protests/messages are the ones that make you both laugh and think. They stick around longer that way. This one seemed especially good for the juxtaposition of the original and the parody- the upbeat tone while singing about the general destruction of our democracy. The hippies of the 60′s vs now.
I was briefly feeling ambitious and was going to make a YouTube video with a full version of “We all live in an fascist police state” to the tune of “Yellow Submarine”, overlayed with images of the various beatings, unlawful arrests, and such that happened at both the RNC and DNC.
However, that would involve me finding a karaoke version of the song, learning to sing, recording it, remixing my voice in, along with appropriate beating sound effects, finding a bunch of video clips, and mixing all of this together into a nice finished product. Unfortunately I have neither the time, nor (probably more importantly) pretty much any multimedia editing skills that aren’t rustier than my first car.
But, I was ambitious enough to rewrite the lyrics. I think they’d fit pretty well.
Feel free to sing along, and mentally replace the images of the cartoon versions of the Beatles with images like these.
If anyone actually has the equipment to record audio and remix clips, or even knows where to start, let me know. It would be fun to make the actual video, even if we did have to use my singing.
Fascist Police State:
In the town where I was born,
Police are wearing black uniforms,
To protect the government,
In the land of police state.
So we protest in the streets,
Till they sprayed us all with mace,
And collapsed in fits of pain,
In our fascist police state.
We all live in a fascist police state,
fascist police state, fascist police state,
We all live in a fascist police state,
fascist police state, fascist police state.
And our friends are now in jail,
And they raided the house next door,
Preemptive strikes just like the war.
(air raid sirens, in a somewhat trumpet like manner)
We all live in a fascist police state,
fascist police state, fascist police state,
We all live a fascist police state,
fascist police state, fascist police state.
(Tighten up that line men!
Round up the journalist over here sir!
Battle stations! Battle stations!
Aye, aye, sir, fire!)
And they shred the bill of right,
Every freedom taken away,
The Patriot Act and FISA rule,
Over our fascist police state (Ha ha!)
We all live in a fascist police state,
fascist police state, fascist police state,
We all live in a fascist police state,
fascist police state, fascist police state.
(fading)
We all live in a fascist police state,
fascist police state, fascist police state,
We all live in a fascist police state,
fascist police state, fascist police state.