There once was a land surrounded by oceans
Whose people would link arms and sing their devotions
To riches and freedom the Good Lord did grant them
In a rousing rendition of their national anthem!

When would they do this, you might ask, and why?
Well, every year on the Fourth of July!
They’d sing all their songs like a coast-to-coast choir
And marvel at skies filled with works made of fire.
They’d celebrate proudly the Land of the Free
And pledge, oh so loudly, we all sing of thee!

But over in Moscow a nasty old gremlin
Sat brooding with envy up high in the Kremlin,
Plotting a plot that was brazenly bonkers:
For he who DIVIDES, it’s he, too, who conquers.
Everything about him was bloody and bad
Right down to his name—like the Impaler, Vlad!

Meanwhile, back home, there lived two wealthy trolls
Who traded for treasure their virtual souls.
Guided by greed and cold algorithms
These Grinches exploited the great nation’s schisms.
Their names? Jack and Zuck! Vlad thought it was funny
That what he did for hate, they did for money.

So Vlad, Jack, and Zuck worked hard to DIVIDE
The folks into two incompatible sides.
They filled up their heads with fake, phony news
That heated and heightened their diverging views.
They fomented fear and anger and hate
With slurs, lies, and insults, some little, some great.

The people forgot what once bound them as one
And split mother from daughter, and father from son;
Split upper from lower, the left from the right,
The red from the blue and the black from the white.
Soon all they could see was that horrible split
In terrible terabytes of bully bullshit!

The people forgot that the UNITED state–
That state of UNION is what made them great.

Vlad, as you know, is worse than the worst
And will never, ever put our interests first.
There might still be hope, though, for Zuck and for Jack;
To our country’s cause we might win them back.
Can they be content running digital errands?
Or must they be Digital Age Robber Barons?

You must understand that like bees love their honey,
The one thing for sure that’ll move them is MONEY!
So do it right now! Throw Facebook aside!
Read a good book, or go for a ride!
Do it right now! Get off of Twitter!
Find something better to do on the shitter!

Let these two boys know that our battle cry
Is “Boycott them both on the Fourth of July!”
And when some try to tweak you there on your device–
Just count to ten, then say something nice.
There’s one more thing we all ought to do:
To country, not faction, always be true.

Image by DonkeyHotey