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Well Hello! Do you like my little collage up there? It was pretty easy to make... the internet is just teeming with pictures of strange and wonderful things, so being a confirmed opportunist I availed myself of some of them, in the selfish interest of making a bold statement. I'm becoming markedly bolder as I gradually continue to lose all hope. This song was actually written sometime around 1996 or thereabouts, before the notorious TERRORIST attacks on the three World Trade Center towers occurred on that day of infamy, "September 11th." It was actually inspired by a movie I saw that seemed to glorify the nobility of war... your typical Hollywood fare. It was a great action-packed movie, full of mass murder, mayhem, carnage, explosions, blood and guts, and war heroes... you know, guys like Patton and Macarthur, Rommel, McCain... Like the legendary war-movie filmaker Steven Spielberg, I've never been to war. Actually, I'm not too bummed out about that... I've always been highly suspicious of the people who hawk wars, for whatever rationale they come up with to justify such large-scale aggression and destruction. It seems to me that some people actually need to have an enemy figure, someone to fight with, someone to kill in the name of patriotism... I guess they're happy. There is always an armed conflict going on somewhere around the world for them to get off on. Oh, I suppose I'm being a little sarcastic and pessimistic. Just because I myself am scared shitless at the thought of sitting in a fox-hole listening to screaming missiles coming at me (they say you never hear the one that gets you), or of storming a beach laced with land mines with machine gunners trying like hell to kill me (so I won't kill them first), or of parachuting out of an airplane over a landscape full of trees that I might just get tangled up in, or of getting blown to little pieces by outraged suicide bombers who seem to be very pissed off at me just because I'm coming to murder their women and children and steal their exports in order to continue my meaningless over-consuming lifestyle, I know I shouldn't point the finger at brave people who aren't (afraid, I mean). So I guess I'll just point the finger (the middle finger) at the guys who send those heroic aggros out there to do their dirty work. I don't want to mention any particular names here (I'm in enough trouble as it is), but I've heard tell that they're quite often the same guys who actually profit from armed conflicts, at the expense of us little people. Guys that own interests in corporations like Haliburton or Bechtel, or maybe Boeing, or... what was that company that manufactured the napalm that we were forced to drop on innocent civilians in southeast Asia? DuPont I think it was... but don't believe anything I tell you, my memory is going fast... just another victim of Alzheimers, or some such disease. If you're one of those poor people less fortunate than I am, however, someone who actually was conscripted and forced to go out there fighting for your country, well let me tell you... you have my extreme sympathy. I missed the famous Viet Nam invasion by only a few years, relatively speaking. If you were of draft age in the 1960's before military service became voluntary, you probably remember the situation you faced if you couldn't get a deferment... waiting in fear and loathing for your number to come up, as the body bags returned home by the tens of thousands... as well as the soul-scarred, mutilated victims of that rather questionable excursion. Yes, my heart goes out to people like you. But maybe you didn't get drafted and sent to war. I read somewhere that over two-thirds of the soldiers who went to Viet Nam were volunteers! Perhaps they thought they were defending their country, or someone else's country, or just capitalism in general... after all, socialism is the tool of the evil conspirators, isn't it? Perhaps you yourself feel that you have to drop bombs and napalm on innocent civilians, or strafe little ant-like figures running away in terror from a helicopter, or hurl grenades into public places, or even drop atomic bombs on civilians! It's just part of life, isn't it? I guess anyone who thinks that mankind could ever reach a state of utopian maturity where we could transcend war and settle our differences some other way is a sadly mistaken, unrealistically optimisic great big fool, right? Given the contentious nature of mankind, that concept is just plain foolishness, is it not? You can see it anywere you go... people not getting along, people resenting each other, hating each other. War is as natural to us as is getting angry at people whose views don't comport with our own, right? To think wars could ever cease everywhere is just plain pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, be it internecine warfare or a world-wide conflagration; it just happens, man. No way around it. Even if all the war-profiteers and elite conspirators just dried up and died, we'd still have massive disruptions of peace and tranquility. Or would we? I read somewhere else that wars were not caused by man's pugnacity, but by his docility! Our inability to resist the people that marshal us into their standing armies and send us out there to have at each other in their (our?) interests! I must say, I highly resent such an accusation! I myself think that I would rather run away and hide somewhere before I'd allow myself to get sucked into a war of mysterious origins. I am decidedly resentful of anyone who would try to manipulate me in such an ignoble manner. But really, who am I trying to kid? Where would I run to? I'm not that resourceful... I can't even get it together to buy myself a used automobile, let alone flee to another country! I should just admit it... I'm just a very fortunate so-and-so whose number never came up. This song goes out to anyone who actually was forced to go out and kill, main, or even frighten another human being, especially for a cause you didn't believe in or even understand, like so many of the Viet Nam conscriptees (many of whom got their skulls beaten in with billy clubs for staging spirited protests against that mysteriously contrived fight). I have particular empathy for anyone who thought they were fighting for a good cause, but later learned that they were just a helpless pawn of some hell-bound big-wig who didn't really give a flying fu@k about anything but his own selfish interests. When I consider the hopelessness of the human condition, I sometimes feel an enormous sense of despair; in the end, all I can do is feel glad that I never had to go fight in a war, although the possibility is still there in spite of my advanced age (anything could still happen). Yes, I should just shut up and be grateful about it. But somehow I don't feel so glad. Click Here To Listen To: DEVIL MADE ME DO IT Click Here To Go Back To Index Text Copyright 2019; "Devil Made Me Do It" song and sound recording Copyright 1996 by one scared little Charles Adrian Trevino. My apologies to any brave people who actually like to fight in wars; no offense intended. Thanks for listening, this is chucktrevino.com. |