Let Me Speak Plainly

I’ll say it clear,

for those of you way in the back:

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These are not normal times.

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You want to believe it’ll pass,

that the pendulum will find its balance,

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but these are not normal times.

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Your lives may not have been touched just yet,

and maybe you think they won’t be touched at all,

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but these are not normal times.

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You and yours will not escape this tide,

because evil is being done in our land,

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and these are not normal times.

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If you have a wife, sisters, daughters,

their rights to the franchise are in danger,

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because these are not normal times.

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The ones claiming the system is rigged

aim to rig the system in their favor,

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beneath the cloak of ‘these not being normal times.’

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We are being pitted one against another,

the old fascist tactics in play,

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proof that these are not normal times.

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And now blood is being shed in foreign lands,

no reasons given, no justification or oversight provided.

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Do you believe these are normal times?

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What will you do when a masked man without a body camera

asks for you to prove your citizenship?

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Will that feel like normal times?

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When your neighbors are rounded up and disappear,

kids pulled out of school, afraid to work, to shop, to live,

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will that feel like normal times?

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Silence is complicity; there is no other equation.

So I say again as plainly as I can: your voice, your presence is required now.

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Because these are not normal times.