Bedtime For Democracy

If only people could shrink
Our world wouldn't be so overcrowded
Bring ourselves down to size
There'd be so much more food to go 'round

Why don't we build a machine
With all the know-how of the industries
We put a man on the moon
On earth we'll need more room to breathe real soon
Oh

Drink your vaccine and let's shrink
And bring your poodle so it doesn't eat us
The roads will be so wide
No traffic jams when we're half a foot tall
Bring what you need down here
We'll shrink it all by microwave
Don't wanna die like dinosaurs
We'll have enough resources to go round

Oh

So now you've made the big shrink
Meanwhile we'll keep acting big
We well-bred beautiful people
Who says we have to go too?
Cops and mason businessmen
Were exempted from the ovens
As if you weren't already.
The rest of you are all our termites now

Oh

Life can only get better
All you need to do is fall in love
Everyone else has fun but you
Buy that fun you'll fit in too

Dance your problems away
Government music
Cheap escape to that mind-control beat
Government music
Mellow out

We're world industry's thoughtlords
The entertainment wing
We keep you all in line

By fixing your free will
Surround you with pop fantasies
Just slightly out of reach
To soften all the blows
Of your forced daily routine

We strip-mine your underground culture
Take the bite out and rinse it clean
Give ourselves credit for creating it
Then sell it back to you
At twice the price

Our pool of talent vampires
Has blown into your town
To dazzle, sign and milk you
All strictly on our own terms

You think you've got a lot to say
We'll change that real soon
You're not a person anymore
We've made you a cartoon

By the time we're through remolding you
You won't even recognize your face
There's no end to the eager beavers
Drawn the moths to our babylon's mirage

Conveyor belt of fleshdunce
They all want to do the fleshdance
Conveyor belt of fleshdunce
Who all want to do the fleshdance

Have we got a telethon for you coming soon on mtv! a rockin' bankroll
Extravaganza featuring all your vigilante rock stars! sammy
Hagar

Poison is bubbling
Beneath your dreamhome
Buried there years before

Kid runs in crying
From playing in the garden
"mommy, i burned my hands!"

"what's making our eyes so itchy?"
"don't rub 'em

_______________________ countdown!
Get ready for the blast off!
And don't forget the hype!
We're going into space.


Distinguished scientists
A pesky senator
And monkey turds leaking from the lab
All brought to us play-by-play by howard cosell

You're going where no man has gone before
Because we owe you some favors
And besides you're bright
A little too bright

Step one:
Senator, your vomit,
It's time to analyze it
For the folks back home

Open the hatch, launch the war satellite
That the commies aren't supposed to know about
Our real challenge is to keep it a secret
From the press back home

You're going where no man has gone before
Don't ask us where that is

Great wall of china
It's so big it's seen from outer space
Put there to keep starving neighbors
Locked outside the gates

What's changed today?
Empires hoard more than they need
And peasants threaten our comfort

We'll build a great wall around our power
Build a great wall around our power

Bankrupt l.a.'s streetcar line
So people pay more to drive
Plant strategic freeways
To divide neighborhoods by color lines

We'd rather pay for riot squads
Than pump your ghetto back to life
We let your schools decay on purpose

To build a great wall around our power
Another great wall around our power

Warlords in grey suits
Take a different route to work each day
Second-hand green berets
Form the companies' private armies.
We'll take all your gold
But won't teach reading or feed your poor
The league of gentleman
Would rather feed guns to puppet dictators

There's too many people in your world
And refugees are expensive
When they trickled down onto our soil
We hunt them and arrest them
Classify them insane
And put them back on the next plane
To the waiting arms
Of the same death squads they fled

We've built a great wall around our power
Economic great wall around our power
Worldwide great wall around our power

Give us your poor,
Your tired and your weak
We'll send 'em right back
To their certain death

I say, come on!
To pleasures unknown
Where we fly to when we are all bored
C'mon for the ride
And hop with the jet set tonight

We'll sun ourselves red down in montego bay
Hotel-hired guards keep the natives away

We wanna save the whales
We'll go watch them feed,
Buzz around them in boats
'til they won't breed
Just here for the ride
Then we hop with the jet set tonight

Check out them indians' ancestral art
Some of that would look cute up on our walls
Yeah, suit it just fine
When you hop with the jet set tonight

We'll hire out some poachers to go steel their dolls
Who cares if they're sacred