“War” (Henry Cow)

War is a product of the “partial mind,” clouded by “dark obscurity.” One could read this Hegel’s way, since he argues that the State “is most supremely its own” (has a truly self-sufficient and complete identity) only at the moment of War. But instead of critiquing identity, which cannot be closed without adopting a warlike posture toward the other, the Cow’s disciplinary Marxism maliciously heckles all patriotic persons as dumb lemmings (“people get what they deserve”) who should have been able to make themselves whole without all the drum beating, trumpet playing, and gore. A project both impossible and endlessly, potentially murderous; or, ranting become its own object.

“Two Tribes (for the victims of ravishment)” (Frankie Goes to Hollywood)

War as sporting event (“a point is all that you can score”), and thereby fit for a kind of anthropological analysis, via the metaphor of the “tribe.” None of this amounts, however, to an anti-war or progressive position: wars are promoted or fought for symbolic point-scoring purposes (see the 2003 Iraq War); and even superpower wars are anthropologically buttressed (see Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations). Thus, this attempt to shame the combatants, or to sway “enlightened” public opinion, unmasks nothing we don’t already know (and might even work as a football anthem).

“Sheep” (Pink Floyd)

Produced by Roger Waters, Animals (1977) sounds like dry ice. There’s no place or space in this mix for a psychedelic communion of instruments. Instead, voices are constantly modulating toward machines, and the guitar delivers its message in biting, often atonal shards. This revolution is serious business. Translating capitalism into the terms of the animal fable, Roger Waters discovers three relevant categories: pigs (the one percent), dogs (aspirants, or those aggressively playing the “game”), and sheep (perfect victims). Religion, invented by the system in order to produce quiescent meat, is skewered; Waters rewrites Psalm 23 as preparation for the abattoir, and proposes, in its place, a rather unlikely but decidedly low-tech alternative: karate training. Karate, however, is deeply intertwined with the history of buddhisms. It is in no sense a secular practice, and its spiritual dimensions have provided platforms for both state rule and capitalist accumulation. (Indeed, Žižek says that if Max Weber were alive today, he’d likely write a book on the “buddhist ethic and the spirit of global capitalism”). Meanwhile, the sheep, who have become martial arts masters, achieve a Pyrrhic victory: “the dogs are dead,” but the pigs are still overhead, ready to carpet bomb. Even if your kicks are fast as lightning, you can’t defeat aerial bombardment by those who preside over the garrison state, with their cloven hooves on the triggers. So how do we read the sign “karate”? As hope from the East? As a weapon of the weak? As always already defeated and coopted? Whatever karate brings to the table, it still cannot execute a pork chop.

“Anarchy in the U.K.” (Sex Pistols)

Easily overlooked that the singer barks, like Melville’s Ahab, a version of “Who’s over me?” Is it the MPLA, UDA, IRA, UK? Finally, singing downscale, toward a theoretical point which gathers the particularities: “or just another country”? The details are irrelevant. Whether already existing or sought, by reactionary or insurgent forces, it’s (merely, emptily) the state-form. A repeating, structured sovereignty.

“Creepin’” (Grand Funk Railroad)

Secrety, slowly, and incrementally the country no longer is in the hands of the people (sure, sure: we certainly live in a land where leaders endorse Leo Straussian lying and misdirection). And by “tomorrow,” it’ll all be gone: in the hands of the “fools” who are “rapin’ the land.” Long organ lines and hard-rock crooning turn this into a lament: it’s nearly (or really) too late for action. But, were we all to “wake up” right now, we could turn this country in something “strong” and full of “class.” Creepy.

“Home Security” (Trans Am)

Though the perimeter can be secured safe enough, it’s on the edge/fringe where intrusions happen regardless of the setup/theorization. Synth-bass double-time sections intensify, with shifting snare timbre emphasizing more maniacal attempts at a total lockdown of the home. Half-time outro (with whole note bass accompanying riffing, drums at home in the security state) never repulses the synth hum: the outside lives with/in the borders and the nation.

“Sharia Law in the U.S.A.” (The Kominas)

Tit for tat. Taqwacore groups, inspired by Michael Muhammad Knight’s novel, The Taqwacores (1993), are “bad Muslims” who have adopted punk’s love of “deliberately bad music, deliberately bad clothing, deliberately bad language and deliberately bad behavior.” In the novel, the band Vote Hezbollah (actually, it’s a Muslimgauze album title) writes a song called “Muhammad Was a Punk Rocker,” in which it is affirmed that the founder of Islam “tore everything down” and “rocked that town.” In reading this trax, therefore, from perhaps the best-known group inspired by MMK, it’s important to remember that the irony is laid on with a trowel. What’s under investigation here is a certain axiomatics: the Islamic-American singer claims to have had the “cops chase me out of my Mother’s womb,” and “my crib was in State Pen before age two.” After that, adding insult to injury, “the Feds had bugged my red toy phone.” Given this post-9/11 neo-internment of Muslim Americans, everything else falls right into place: the singer turns terrorist and his hyperbolics are astounding: he’ll cut off a hand from every American man, and take the president’s daughter into his harem in order to have his “brother” anally rape her, for example. Finally, there’s one more turn in this struggle or game of tit and tat: the trax’s historical background samples imply either that America will respond to the song’s threat of Sharia terrorism in such a way as to return us to the “duck and cover” mentality of the 1950s (note the trax’s shape as a stray cat strut), or that such a neo-Cold War mentality already governed the treatment of Arab Americans since at least the 1990s. If the latter is the case, then we’re truly caught in a vicious circle. But axiomatics are not destiny, and taqwacore bands prove that American immigrants from the Middle East are more likely to become satirists than terrorists. And that’s dangerous to every form of institutionalized axiomatic analysis.

“Thrown to the Wolves” (Death Angel)

JoAnna Russ’ narrator in We Who Are About to . . . attempts to practice ars moriendi while her companions on a possibly uninhabited planet are preoccupied with the survival of civilization. While she doesn’t realize that her antagonists are also practicing the art of dying in a modern way, there is the realization that either option demands extreme violence. Analogically, different iterations of the christian guidebooks—or, currently, “best practices” manuals—to ars moriendi, at times, rehearse familiar debates about the propriety of innovation. This trax, from the album Ars Moriendi, exploits this tension by refocusing. The “pack” coming for you values “no compromise,” and managed banishment is their praxis. You won’t be left alone. The assault is constant and demands ritual sacrifices of whatever type of family you’ve culled together. There are no future decisions. One remains “hiding,” “choking,” and “beg[ging]. The key is that you’ve been “betrayed,” as there once was a promise since withdrawn by the state. What can be picked from the remains? Here, it’s the interruption of “worth” and the “dignity” of it all.

“Political Science” (Randy Newman)

The “science” of Washington, D.C. political science amounts to nothing but “us,” “them” (who hate “us,” but we don’t know why), and the use of deadly force (because bombing will “set everybody free”). The blind state-based terrorism of soft-shoe shuffling, aw-shucks good intentions.