A Model Psychosis

Track 8. A Snake Under Every Stone

Early '50s (with repercussions well into the future)

I think this is the best-sounding track on the album. I don't know what I did differently, but this became my reference track for mastering the CD. Performing the tune was a joy. Writing it was alternately depressing, nauseating, and infuriating.

After September 11th, I never heard anyone mention America's gift/bribe to the Taliban just months prior to the attacks. I just couldn't believe, in the spring of 2001, that we were even talking to the fundamentalist thugs that took weeks to deface cliff carvings that had stood for 1500 years. But let's let that go for now.

It's certainly no conspiracy theory, but history, that Frank Olson's death is shrouded in lies and disinformation. Eric Olson has spent the better part of his life pulling at that shroud, and I think his father deserves no less, although Eric and his family certainly deserved a hell of a lot more. Cheney's memo to Rumsfeld, his boss at the time, exists. Gerald Ford's attempted payoff to the Olson family, 22 years after the fact, is a matter of public record. And America's "Black Sites" are old news. Rather, they're hardly news at all, but just another unforgivably shameful part of our country's status quo.

Sorry, you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, do you? See the links at the bottom of the page, as well as the links for Dachau, to get an idea of the depth of the story I try to tell in the eight verses of this song. It's hard to say this, because I love America, but you can't tell our story without telling the story of the Nazi medical experiments and the doctors who were spared from hanging and given a new life in the land of opportunity. All it took was a Paperclip.

Please do be careful, though, when looking into this. If you keep flipping rocks, you'll find a poisonous serpent hiding beneath each one. They have a nasty bite.

lyric

there once was an army doctor, the army would prefer to leave his name unknown
they sent him to see their black sites, then their cover was blown
he left administrations
when he saw cruel interrogations
that left a snake under every stone

he met at the Deep Creek cabin with Lashbrook and Gottlieb like a dark Thoreau
to ease his troubled concience, the gimp poured him a stiff cointreau
Frank was a crack
on the government track
to keep a snake under every stone

the man had made his mind up, so they set him up on the 10th floor of the Statler Hotel
he tossed his cash and wallet there, did he know that the room was a death-row cell?
when he dropped from the brink
his wife she dropped into drink
to hide the snakes under every stone

His son gave up the best years of his life, he knew he had to be tough
his father's death was not a suicide, but the knowledge was not enough
his thirst for justice burned
he left no stone unturned
and found a snake under every stone

Cheney wrote to Rumsfeld of holding down the fort
"the Olsons held a conference, we have to keep them out of court
if the story should break
our secret's at stake:
the snake under every stone"

700 doctors stolen away from the Nuremburg trials
the allies fixed their now invisible sins with a paperclip on their files
their morality was sick 
so, with Rummy and Dick,
they kept a snake under every stone

43 million dollars to the Taliban in May '01
two months after they vandalized the Buddhas of Bamiyan
they left no copies
but they kept down the poppies
and the snake under every stone

They needed a new Pearl Harbor for their New American Century
based on their twisted vision of military strength and moral clarity
the walking wounded's hell
when the towers fell
was there a snake under every stone?

A Model Psychosis: A Snake Under Every Stone

A Model Psychosis

Track 8. A Snake Under Every Stone

lyric

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