i don t have to tell you things are bad everybody knows things are bad it s a depression everybody s out of work or scared of losing their job the dollar buys a nickel s worth banks are going bust shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter punks are running wild in the street and there s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do and there s no end to it we know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat and we sit watching our tvs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty three violent crimes as if that s the way it s supposed to be we know things are bad worse than bad they re crazy it s like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don t go out anymore we sit in the house and slowly the world we re living in is getting smaller and all we say is please at least leave us alone in our living rooms let me have my toaster and my tv and my steel belted radials and i won t say anything just leave us alone well i m not gonna leave you alone i want you to get mad i don t want you to protest i don t want you to riot i don t want you to write to your congressman because i wouldn t know what to tell you to write i don t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the russians and the crime in the street all i know is that first you ve got to get mad you ve got to say i m a human being goddammit my life has value 