Gideon Oknin Poet Lyric

Don't stick out, don't dare to surpass

They had sixty thousand names to kill
Officers, journalists, blood to spill
Athletes and scholars to exterminate
Potential leaders had to meet that fate.

When the Nazis invaded Poland, they carried out that plan
Because a German colonist should be served by a laboring man
The irony was they found graves at Katyn
Of Poles killed by Russian henchmen of Stalin.

Graves of officers, owners of factories
teachers, land owners, and M.D.'s
The Russians didn't want any opposition
So over-achievers must be out of commission.

(chorus)
Don't achieve, don't surpass
Be a faceless member of the mass
Wolves will come for you one night
So why be worthwhile to bite.
Ideologues don't want you to achieve
Keep your head low, avoid the sieve.

Pol Pot's men had an agrarian dream
No literacy, wipe the slate clean
No corrupt cities, no thinking classes
One shortcut was to shoot people with glasses.

They killed a quarter of Cambodia's population
Doctors, engineers, any one with education.
Who could survive the rules of the game?
Ideologues find so many reasons to blame.

Chinese kids beat some teachers to death
humiliated, even tortured some of the rest
This was Mao's cultural revolution
If you were just a janitor, no persecution.

So don't stick out, don't be all you can
Because someone somewhere has a plan
To make an omelet eggs have to be split
Don't be the egg, it's not worth it.
Be the nobody who blends in the crowd
You may be a category that's allowed.

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