World Leader Pretend

One of the neat things about this song (and a lot of R.E.M.) is how it plays with words. Like of course the raise/raze thing. Another example is the ambiguity of the line "This is my mistake, let me make it good." Does this mean "let me fix my mistake?" Or is the narrator trying to say (using some sloppy grammar :->), "leave me to make my mistake the right way, the way I want to make it?"

I don't think this song is "about" politics at all, although my feeling about R.E.M. has always been that their songs are about whatever you make of them; I think the intended meaning has to do with someone fighting an internal war .

That said, being a gen-Xer, I can totally understand why a lot of people are reminded of the Cold War by this song, both because of the suggestive lyrics and because of when Green came out (Gorbachev was doin' his thing, the Berlin wall came down the following fall - November '89, I think it was...jeez I feel old).

The imagery (mind you, this is just the imagery, not the deeper meaning of the song) makes me think of a world leader - the head of a superpower (it doesn't matter whether he's a "good guy" or not; I get a sense of him being rather arrogant and self-centered, the sort of person who thinks he knows what's best for the whole world and is happy to force it on the rest of the world) - sitting at a table covered with maps and reports and things, studying it all and trying to plan military tactics, perhaps accompanied by generals and advisers and suchlike (people who generally share his opinions, whom he appointed to tell him what he wants to hear), looking for weak spots in the enemy's defenses while trying to ensure that his country is protected, trying to get allies (allied nations and/or his political allies) to take risks instead of doing it himself, coming up with ways to use the war as an excuse to suspend civil liberties, push his domestic political agenda, etc.: the war is doing more harm to him (i.e., his country, possibly also him personally, by giving his political opponents ammunition against him) than to the enemy.

It particularly brings to mind these faux-wars like the Cold War, the War on (Some) Drugs, the War on Terrorism, as well as literal wars like the proxy wars that tend to spring up out of these "wars," or the US wars with Iraq and Afghanistan. Or for a less current example, the Wars of the Roses, in which people found themselves fighting their own cousin (the dispute that started the whole business was between Richard II and Henry IV, who were 1st cousins) or even their brother or sister, all over obscure medieval rules of inheritance.