'The Times They Are A-changin' My view on modern times.

[MiniMandaRuth]

Lately, I've noticed that a lot of things have changed. Gas prices, media, taxes, schools... Well, things change. They change a lot. All the time. All through the world.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

People have changed. They've gone from God-fearing, hat wearing people to free-willed yet poor people, then taken a switch. I've only been alive for so long, but as far as I've seen it, the rift begins in school. We take one road. You're either 'Normal' or 'Not normal' in our lives.

I think that the 'Not normal' crowd will continue down the path of the Mods in Quadrophenia, bored and angsty, fueled by both music and the thought of personal freedom. Maybe some won't throw themselves off cliffs, but I'm sure some will pop some pills and get in riots. America has changed.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Writers have changed. No longer are we back in the shadows, but now we are scholars. We are people who seduce others into our worlds.

Writing has also become a vicious game with no winner in sight. We tear at each other with the pen, which, is supposed to be mightier than the sword, with a bloody wrath. We write false things in newspapers, in books, on the internet. We write of stolen elections, try to do a five-year-old battle justice. Writing has changed as much as the people who are authors, who are figureheads. Gone is the author at her desk with an old type-writer, dreaming of worlds. Now, here is the woman, glaring at interns, asking if her work is done. Writing has changed.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Everything America had fell in the Thirties. We are heading back that way. Now, the political rift is bigger and badder than before. Political fat-cats agree to cut down trees of old growth forests, to delay bills on important issues such as birth control. The few who are uncorrupted and working for the greater good are slanderized beyond belief. Some give up, some push further onward on the frontier of success.

Gone are the old, romantic times where politicians fought tooth and nail in great numbers for what they believed it. Gone are the times when they tried to get a struggling America off their butt and back into the world. Gone are the times when they would send their own sons and daughters into war alongside those who had voted for them. Politics have changed.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

Children are watching more T.V than ever, and they are seeing more sex, more violence, more drugs. They are seeing more Limbaugh, more Bush, more Rove. They are being influenced for the rest of their lives. All the while, some kids are still hanging onto their dreams with tear-filled eyes, watching as a system that once accepted them now favors the test-takers. They watch as their parents turn away, claiming that their problems aren't real problems.

Teenagers watch as dreams of music and acting go away as America chooses beauty over talent, flabbergasted as they see the old time of movies and music and wonder... what happened?

Mothers and fathers turn away from their children that so desperately need them, working all hours of the day to feed and clothe their families. Families have changed.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

All I can say, is that I hope. I hope you are right, Dylan. I really do.

MiniMandaRuth