Distant Sense of Random Menace

[Verse 1]
Maybe it's too complicated, maybe it's a minefield
Maybe it's like someone else's murder, it's not quite real
Buried page 10 of today's paper
Read about another road rage of a crazed teenager
The mother gives the vox grab saying she's just
Sad, and all the justice in the world won't bring her daughter back
Flavour of the 48 hours til the news finds another
Utter tragedy to increase the views
And you still never know if you've reached the truth
30 seconds to a minute and you're in it up to the tips of your toes
And the truth can be a dodgy uncle
Media moguls and leaders act like Simon & Garfunkle
The, right wing squarks for yet more hawks
And the, left wing calls for yet more peace talks
And many people left are asking who to believe
Cos reality is as muddy as token olive leaves
And apparently you can't wear your heart on your sleeve
Cos the menace is too distant for listeners to grieve
And even umm, I've been numbed til the cartoon alternative
Just trying to learn to live

[Chorus #1]
Kigali
It's just a distant sense of random menace
Chechnya
It's just a distant sense of random menace
Lebanon
It's just a distant sense of random menace
Woomera
It's just a distant sense of random menace

[Verse 2]
Try as I might I cannot get my head around the
Hutus slaughtering the Tutsis in Rwanda one-nine-nine-four
And then on top to comprehend how the United Nations
Let it happen with their blue helmets armed by the door
Eight hundred thousand in less than
Ninety days, is Africa just too far away
Or is the genocide convention only mentioned in connection
With the Nazis and the Jews during World War Two
Cos your world views seen through the same few that drew
Their bloody colonial maps for custodial taxes
Historical pacts, treaties and age-old arrangements ignore
In order for the dominant order to be restored
Warlords, dictators, puppet regimes installed
While cold wars and old walls did fall
Wars on drugs and wars on terror
Later on there'll be concessions made by governments of intelligence errors
Is to understand to simplify? Black and white, good
And bad, learn not to sympathise unless it's of an allied flag
I'll be damned if my land is the fifty-first state
Both a realist and idealist on the same day

[Chorus #2]
Vietnam
It's just a distant sense of random menace
Sierra Leone
It's just a distant sense of random menace
Zimbabwe
It's just a distant sense of random menace
Bosnia
It's just a distant sense of random menace

[Verse 3]
It's not a soapbox, or at least I hope not
These are things that affect me so much they're what I dream of
Dream of different endings where lessons are learnt
Before good and bad were copyright foreign policy terms
Before hip hop was either barbeque or bling
Before it seemed like everyone was operated by string
So align yourself, define yourself, design yourself
With any luck your life will all work out
And you won't find yourself the victim of an effort to ethnically cleanse
Left to defend the rest of these men
Women and children, from rape, pillage and killing cos
Every evil got it's coalition of the goddamn willing
So forgive me if I can't give you something to laugh to
This is for you to argue, shake your mind and arse to
It's for me to ask you just who can you trust
Dust to dust, and if tomorrow is us? What if...

[Chorus #3]
Kashmir
It's just a distant sense of random menace
Guam
It's just a distant sense of random menace
Kabul
It's just a distant sense of random menace
San Salvador
It's just a distant sense of random menace
Gaza Strip
It's just a distant sense of random menace
East Timor
It's just a distant sense of random menace...