“The Course of Human Events” was composed in 2006. It is a summation of what the band members of Séance Fiction had learned from studying the history of modern political philosophy. Marx envisioned a proletarian revolution. Lenin envisioned a dictatorship of the proletariat. Mao envisioned the future as an endless revolution by a revolutionary class. Frantz Fanon, now read as a prophet by millions of American college freshmen, adapted the idea to call for violent “decolonization” worldwide, producing perpetual revolutionaries who would go beyond the mere overthrow of capitalism to overthrow everything and create a utopia of perfect freedom. Inevitably, every one of these ideas became a new tyranny (“before your eyes / become a lie”) with every real-world application.
State of the union, never quite as good as it would seem
You cast in your lot, but you’re taken by thieves
No representation, building up in you, giving you steam
You are the heir to a forgotten dream
We hold these truths self-evident
We’ll find the root, we’ll sever it
There comes a time in the course of all human events
When the waves of tyranny crest too high to swim
And now is the time to sever all political chains
Now to drain all the water, start over again
Start over again
At the top of the tower there is no one here left to blame
The hypocrisy common in here is all done in your name
It’s time to progress forward and tell you just how things will change
We know just what’s best for you, watch everything stay just the same
When in the course of all human events
When you find yourself tired of the lie
Just know that deep down we care about you
Now bow your heads and cover your eyes
Right before your eyes / before your eyes, become a lie
Remove the cause thinking you’re gonna alter the symptom
And before too long you’ll find you’re one of them
And nothing has changed. Even from the top can it be seen, now
The hurt that you’ve shepherded are all awash in this bipartisan apathy
At the top of the tower there is no one here left to blame
The atrocities common in here are all done in your name
Never to emulate, only to emulate
Only perpetuate, only to subjugate
A Song About the Dialectical Wheel of Perpetual Political Revolution