Backseat Driver from America
I am a backseat driver from America
We drive to the left on forked roads
And the man at the wheel's name is Seamus
He says the child on the corner he knows
And Seamus says, now what chance has that kid got
He says there's barbed wire at all of these exits
And there ain't no place in Belfast to go
Chorus
It's a hard life, it's a hard life, it's a very hard life
It's a hard life wherever you go
And if we poison our children with hatred
Then a hard life is all that they'll know
And there ain't no place in Belfast for that kid to go
(2ndx) in Chicago for those kids to go
(3rdx) in this world for these kids to go
Cafeteria line in Chicago, a fat man in front of me
He's calling black people trash to his children
And he's the only trash here that I see
And I'm thinking this man wears a white hood
In the night when his children should sleep
But they'll slip through their windows and they'll see him
And they'll think that white hood's all they'll need
I was a child of the sixties, when dreams could be held to a TV
With Disney and Cronkite and Martin Luther
And I believed, I believed, I believed
Now I am the backseat driver from America
And I am not at the wheel, in control
And I am guilty, I am war, I am the root of all evil
Lord, and I can't drive on the left side of the road