Thursday, March 04, 2010

With God on Our Side

I heard this song at the end of Constantine's Sword, a great documentary (available instantly from Netflix if you're curious and have an hour and a half to kill).

This is not the Bob Dylan original, but the cover by Aaron Neville. I love his voice.





Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
l’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that the land that I live in
Has God on its side
Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side
Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
l’s made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side
Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side
When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side
I’ve learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side
But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side
Through many dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side
So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war

2 comments:

codeman38 said...

It's bad enough that Watch Instantly offers no closed captions, but from what I can tell, the DVD of Constantine's Sword may also not be captioned. At the very least, the box scan that I found doesn't mention it, nor does the publisher's web site. (Anyone with a copy of the DVD able to confirm or deny this?)

I'm seriously considering getting some people together to start some sort of fansub group dedicated to documentaries and other low-budget indie things, in the interest of making them accessible to deaf/hard-of-hearing audiences and non-native speakers alike.

Kaitlyn said...

I'm sorry I don't know. The one available has subs when he's in Italy or Germany, but yeah. Accessibility fail.

And it's so creepy because they filmed Ted Haggard speaking (I did not assault my monitor) about why harassing- preaching the gospel to a captive audience (air force cadets or was it army?) is the same as watching a Pepsi commercial when you drink Coke.

I wasn't sure when it was made, so I laughed and laughed at every smug lie from his mouth, and then at the end, before the credits, they wrote down the scandal info. Ahhhh... more refreshing than any soft drink.

And I thought of you when I saw my new TV (only 150 US - and new!) has a CC option.