At the
Intrepid Classroom, a lot of the talk is centered around peace and social action and that sort of stuff. We started off talking about issues in relation to music, but I thought about my music library, and I couldn't think of any song that was really political or anything. Well, a couple days ago I saw my favorite musician live, and listening to his songs more actively in that setting, I realized that, oh!, that song is political...oh, that one too! So, I guess I need to listen more carefully, for starters.
One of
Joshua James' songs,
Our Brother's Blood, has a strong message about war.
"Apologies never sounded insincerer
Than when calling up a mother,
Her bloody child on the battle field of war,
While the pretty politicians
lay their babies down to sleep."
So often, war and other forms of destruction are talked about in terms of ethics, morality, and economics. That's all well and good, but we forget that people are involved. It's not just money or right and wrong, but
people. Living, breathing humans
who are affected. Countries may win or lose wars, but at the end of the day, there are parents who have to be told that their child is dead.
Another point that the verse makes is how removed the people are who actually make the decisions. Many politicians don't have children in danger.
"it's fine to sacrifice our brother's blood.
Cuz it ain’t my son that’s fighting in the war
Across the seas."
So often*, the people dying are poor or uneducated or both. The people who put them in the face of a missile are mostly rich and highly educated. Are the policymakers thinking about the actual people who get the work done? How could they be? How could anyone knowingly send a
person to their certain death? Of course, in any war, people die. So, why do we start wars? I just don't know.
"Because one by one we will watch them die,
In shallow graves our soldiers lay."
From Joshua James' "
Commodore," written from the point of view of a child during the Holocaust,
"Mama said the war will end
just as soon as it began.
But then why do we sit and hide?
Commodore oh why?"
Politicians don't always consider the actual will of the people. Rarely do everyday citizens say that they want war. A war would mean that Joey from down the street, who you grew up with, would be shipped off to somewhere you don't know anything about, or that black curtains would need to be put up on all of the windows so "the enemy" won't see you. Mama wants the war to end. But she can't do anything about it, because they all have to hide. And in the meantime, that's all she can tell her kid. What else is there to say?
Politicians are removed, and all they see is the economy and stock prices and their political alliances. Perhaps if they visited their constituencies a bit more, or met more everyday people, wars wouldn't make it through the legislature.
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"I love
humanity but I hate
people." -Edna St. Vincent Millay
For me, this quote is flipped. I love people but I hate humanity. Humanity? The human race as a whole is pretty clumsy, and we start wars. Our collective self turns pretty shy, too, and likes to hide behind its own projected image. "These [insert race of people] dirty the earth, and so to save humanity, I will kill them all!" But
perhaps that's too harsh. Perhaps Ms. Millay meant "the quality of being benevolent" (Wiktionary) - kindness. Well, I love kindness, too, and you know what? I see it in people. Yes, those people that you hate - they are all human, and they have humanity.
Why send kind people to die in a war? I just don't see the sense.
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*Disclaimer: I know nothing for a fact. I'm saying what I perceive to be the case, or hear about, or interpret from the song.
