Past Is Prologue

Down through the years
Demagogues stoked the fears
Of the addle-brained weak minds among us
Demagogues we thought jokes
‘Til a few master strokes
Brought them to power and stung us

We believed and we blamed
All the groups that they named
For the problems we had at the moment
Didn’t wake ‘til too late
And caught in the hate
And the blame game all demagogues foment

They knew how to play
On the problems that weigh
On the folks in a terrible bind
Having nothing to do
With the black or the Jew
Or Iraqis but hey – never mind

They were quick to point out
There are people about
Of whom we must be very suspicious
People who “take”
(Their rhetoric makes
People’s blood boil until it gets vicious)

In the thirties ‘twas Jews
They were why you could lose
Every Deutschmark you had in your purse
In the fifties ‘twas reds
Killing us in our beds
In the nineties Iraqis were way worse

Now we’re told we must fear
Folks who live south of here
They’re the reason our jobs have all flown
And we must build a wall
And the seeds are now tall
The seeds this new demagogue’s sown

So if we turn our backs
And ignore all the facts
And believe in this new demagogue
We’ll have no one to blame
It will be our great shame
We forgot that our Past is Prologue

© tony powers and Barking in the Dark, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to tony powers and Barking in the Dark with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Filed under: Cautionary tale, Poem, politics, writing Tagged: Antisemitism, Demagogue, Immigrants, Iraqis, Nazi Germany Barking in the Dark is run by Tony Powers, a writer/actor/musician.