Crisis of Conscience

[Verse 1 - Guante]
Little boy buy a truck, eat a steak, get paid
Don't give a fuck, take what you want, no delay
No apologies, buy the right outfit or you will be doubted
Buy the right cologne or you'll always be alone
To be a real man there is only one option
And it involves a lot of shopping
' cause it's not just products they sell
They're trying to sell you yourself
So which brand of disposable razor will you use
To cut yourself open when you're trying to prove
That that's blood in there and not gasoline
Which preset supermodel is your fantasy
Which lite beer will delay your unraveling
Which identity will you cut from that magazine
Which truck has the towing capacity
To handle all your baggage
You see a man cave, I see a dark basement
I see the pervasive influence of a media who wants us to fit in little boxes
And what if you don't fit in?
What if you don't fit in?
They tell little girls how to be real women
And tell little boys how to be real men
But when you ask them that "real" means
They throw the same bullshit back at you again
And there's a reason for that, it's the reason I'm mad
It's so ingenious what they feed us here but these are the facts
Gender is a construct
There's no real man no real woman only us
Ladies and gentlemen, friends of all identities
Let's stand up and be who we were meant to be
And if they order me to man up, i'll tell em
I ain't buying what your selling

[Verse 2 - Sammy Warm Hands]
I can't say what I'm trying to say
I'm overwhelmed just trying to fill the lines on the page
Cause its so much more than just another song
It's more that you and me
It's more that right or wrong
And I know cause I'm on both ends of the equation
I can see both sides of the situation
My heart and my mind both know that it's fucked up
To hold ourselves up to these images that are touched up
And an idea that the man is the strong one
You either choose to be a dick, or be on one
If you'll ever get ahead, it seams
You've gotta swallow the shit 'til you burst at the seams
I'm not buying it for a minute
The materialism isn't pulling me in, but im still falling for the gimmick
My biology is unaffected by my mindset
It makes the ideology a lot harder to digest
I see the posters and magazine covers
The images liken women to inanimate lovers
"Just shut the fuck up and look good!"
Pretty's not enough, titties gotta touch
Gotta look as good as the girl on the cover of the book would
But we all know that she don't even look right
Without the makeup and the airbrush
So stop singing to your hairbrush
Quit dreamin' start cookin' and cleanin'
And count those calories like Veronica and Valerie
Stay away from heavy food
Say you have an allergy
Drop those LBs like needles and LP's
They sold you an idea, but now you can tell these
Fat cat, prick, manipulating motherfuckers
That their daughters are growing up as some mean cocksuckers
They get validation from the adoration of men
And they're raising a generation more troubled than them
So stop the bullshit, reject the lies
You gonna grab the wheel or just close your eyes?

[Bridge - Ben Polonsky]
And my higher brain is looking down on me
We have everything, and yet it sounds to me
That there's a vacancy
There is complacency
And my higher brain is coming down on me

[Verse 3 - Sammy Warm Hands]
I'm having a crises of conscience
Why am I attracted to fabricated garbage?
Instinctual versus intellectual
It's so complicated when it comes to sexual issues and content
And we're not running a convent
But I'm at a disadvantage from the onset
I'm the target market demographic
So its harder to tune out the static
Yeah, I'm no hero
This isn't Skynet, this is fucking Channel Zero
Why can't I compliment my beautiful wife
Without a self-depricating reply to ruin the night?
Cause advertisers wanna sell thousands more copies
So they promote the same faces, the same bodies
Until even the stars themselves are insecure
And the tabloids tally every calorie incurred
To an adolescent mind, it isn't easy to accept
That these images subliminally have an effect
So kids skip dinner, so they can feel a bit thinner
And girls worship anti-intellectual women
This isn't the beginning, its been a problem for decades
But the pervasive nature of this situation is threatening
And in an act of defiance, it was hastily decided
That to level the playing field, the best way to fight it
A short-sighted reaction to a long term problem
Making advertisers rich isn't a great way to stop them
So I'll say a little something that's long overdue
I won't contribute to the problem, and neither should you
To all my mothers and my sisters and my wives and my friends
I want to offer my love and respect, the end