The Effort - 1985 [tekst, tłumaczenie i interpretacja piosenki]

There are things I just can't get over
That make me lose sleep and wonder
If the pursuit of happiness could really just be
Trying to forget about this money praising society

I need to know how you are supposed to feel when you've only lived in turmoil
When the abuse you faced as a child inside you boils
Down to the economic stresses your family once faced
And why they turned to drugs, because they were only this country's waste

Unexpected like all my generation
Feeling unwanted and full of questions
It leaves you as the perfect byproduct;
Searching for answers in the bottom of a bottle
But we'll never find them in a system like this
When loss of living lives are so quickly dismissed
To the people who have always loved me
Would only my skin color stop you from butchery?

Did your years on ships, did your years building bombs
Prepare you for life outside Korea, for life back home?
When you would be greeted by a marching parade
With confetti in your hair but you just needed pay

You knew then, you would only be turned away
Killers belong in Vietnam and no other place
H.R. couldn't get what made you this way
It was your sins, all the children she's killed
America has made me this way

Now I can't help seeing the parallels between
Jack and I, driving though California and only seeing
The immigrants hired to pick daily luxuries
Out of trees as the red sun gets so heavy

Well where the fuck is my tent with the broken mirror
And the Mexican Mañana I'm supposed to take care of?
See, I told you this book depressed the fuck out of me
Because, "Kerouac's soul was so lost and lonely."

I think you might be wrong though
It's America who's the lost and lonely soul
But we just give ourselves these mindless jobs
So no one else could ever guess or know
That we are all full of shit, passed by Uncle Sam himself