Steve Schuster
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.