As for money causing wars, that falls under the same objection as “Religion causes wars” or “Nationalism causes wars”. And that is war simply does not require the factors alleged to cause it. War comes from all sorts of causes; some even make war for fun.

Is it possible for poetry to present–or should I say more specifically rock lyrics, which are inherently connected to all the ideas about rock ‘n roll liberation found mostly in music like the chick-a-chick-a guitar–an Aronian analysis with any sobriety?

It is much easier to say that gold is the reason for the wars we wage.

I suppose such a song would need to include dialogic lyrics where two POV’s encounter each other–the Aronesque and, say, the Leninesque. The music itself could note this difference through changing rhythms or keys, but I suppose this moves us to opera and not rock ‘n roll. And I don’t think any of the rock operas available represent such a scenario.

This songbook entry is less-focused on a whole song, but on the idea present in one verse. So here, I’ll say a bit more about the whole song, and why it doesn’t change my interpretation of the one verse:

1) The first verse, the “under a blood red sky” one, speaks of a crowd gathered, about newspapers “saying its true” about the hope of an “arms-entwined chosen few” (the crowd) that “we can break through.” This is deliberately unspecified. Had U2 remained silent in interviews about the Solidarnosc inspiration, what the lyrics alone would have given us is a scenario that certainly involves some kind of humanistic political protest movement pitched between hope and despair, which “though torn in two” could “be as one,” and which longs for a “New Year’s Day.” I see no cues that necessarily tie this verse to the Solidarnosc struggle, even if there are hints (that a late-1982 audience would be rather alive to!) that it could so apply. Does anyone see anything I’m missing here?

2) The song also has a theme about love–”I want to be with you, be with you, night and day”–tightly interwoven with the one of hoping for some sort of New Day political consumation. And the chorus mixes into these the further idea of resolving, perhaps on one’s own, to start anew–”I…I will begin again”– a theme resonant of October’s “Rejoice,” and picked up at the end of War with the employment of Psalm 40′s call for singing a “new song.” We could say a lot more about that intermixing, but my point here is to underline the fact that Solidarity is not The key to the song.

3) The (shorter) verse that my post analyzes says what it says. It can be, and I say wants to be, interpreted on its own terms. Unless we interpret it as saying that the “they” are Poland’s Communist leaders, who preposterously tell their subjects that they live in a golden age, and who also go on to make the Leninist claim about gold/capitalism causing wars, , (!) we have to interpret it as generally applying to modern history, or even all of human history.

Why pair these two distinct verses? Perhaps, to suggest that just as Solidarity is hoping against hope for a breakthrough against communist oppression, but are faced with the real prospect of no change, the pacifist cause broadly understood is hoping for a breakthrough that will end the pattern of continual wars.

Oppression by communist governments turned out to be a much less intractable feature of the human condition than does war, so that one sort of New Year’s Day really was possible. My still-left-wing heart can understand why U2 wanted to pair heroic (but–from their late-1982 perspective–perhaps hopeless?) opposition to communism with the broadly anti-war position. But in retrospect, given the gratitude we now know we all owe to those not-as-obviously-heroic Western Cold Warrior politicians, such as Reagan, who stood firm during the pivotal post-Saigon pre-Glasnost period, it is clear why such a pairing fails, and why it was caught up in a romanticization of politics divorced from Aronian sobriety.