keep grousin'

Hear the poets bitch
Bitch bitch bitch
They got a social itch
Itch itch itch
A red tie fever pitch
Pitch pitch pitch
Hear the poets bitch
Bitch bitch bitch
Now, i'm not stating it's just bloviating
Many make a salient point or three
But all this bawling and critical caterwauling
is a little chicken little to me
Are our memories misty? The "good old days" were a travesty
A parade of oppression, repression, and pain
Though we're still morally astray and the mountaintop far away
each generation is a bit more humane
But lest you remain a sour skeptical
here's a humyn progress roll call
Three centuries past, but one constitutional democracy
Today that number's almost two out of three
Three centuries past, slavery legal in all lands save one
Three decades past, official slave states became none
Three centuries past, execution the law of every land
Today, half the world says "no, that will not stand"
Three centuries past, torture a universal condition
Today, half the planet has torture prohibition
One century past, universal suffrage zero
Today non-universal is a disappearing dodo
Three decades past a husband could be a legal raper
Today humyn rights sweep the globe (at least on paper)
Planetary poverty percentage an all-time low
Violent death a pale shadow of long ago
Two centuries past, nine of ten with illiteracy cursed
That scandalous statistic now nearly reversed
God gave man dominion over "lesser races"?
Science de-pantsed such intellectual disgraces
God said man over womyn holds sway?
Science laughed that one away
God gave man dominion over other creatures?
Such self-serving bullshit is dying, even among preachers
But our retching and kvetching is easily understood
For BAD gets better press than good
And a genetic disposition to negativity
enhances our survivability
In an arena of graceful gymnasts we fixate on stumbles
That keeps hairless apes alive when lion tummy rumbles
Yet today's conservative, so stodgy and shifty
is still MORE liberal than a liberal from 1950
But keep percolating, keep agitating
Keep screaming for justice, and no more waiting!
For today's neglected conscience storms
become tomorrow's taken-for-granted norms