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Do No Harm © 2017 Stephen A Schuster

 

When every factor you consider

Plays a leading role in the plays you stage

And when every fact that you post on Twitter

Has an impact, streaming on your social page

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You say it ain’t no crime when it’s decision time

To grab your guns and sound the alarm

But you cannot ignore what you learned before

Above all do no harm

 

When an old blue collar pays a brown shirt dollar

To a white-bread cracker that you deputized

And we all grow smaller trying stand up taller

Till we all become people we don’t recognize

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We don’t appreciate, we’re already great

Until we end up buying the farm

So don’t you ridicule that old golden rule

Above all do no harm

 

Up above it all

We are here to bear witness

To every threat to our right to exist

To every drunk whose intentions are wicked

To every punk with an iron fist

 

When a grassroots movement guarantees improvement

It’s a power that can sour every consequence

And when the jackboots move in and we’re all sub-human

It’s a foolproof payment at our own expense

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But when the brotherhood trumps the greater good

It’s like a Fleet Street shot in the arm

When every tabloid hack gets a paranoid comeback

Above all do no harm

 

And when the tensions mount before the victory count

Remember third time is always a charm

Before the jubilee, one last decree

Above all do no harm

Do No Harm was written and recorded in the months leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The haunting words, melody, production and arrangement (by Mike Pascarella) are the result of Steve's revulsion of then-candidate Trump's proto-fascist rhetoric.

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Sadly, the urgent alarm bells sounded in Do No Harm were remarkably prescient in 2016, and continue to resonate to this day.

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