Against Me!

Those Anarcho Punks Are Mysterious...

57 Meanings

Add Yours

	


We're all presidents
We're all congressmen
We're all cops in waiting
We're the workers of the world
There is the only in the dispossessed
And it's only about survival
Who has skill to play the game for all it's worth
And reach an obscure kind of perfection

Let's try and keep as much emotion out of this as possible
Let's try and not to remember any names
We'll do it for a country, for a people, for a moral vision
United we'll make them remember our history
Or how we like to be told, how we like to be told

And we rock because it's us against them
We found our own reasons to sing
And it's so much less confusing when lines are drawn like that
When people are either consumers or revolutionaries
Enemies or friends hanging onto the fringes of the cogs in the system

It's just about knowing where everyone stands
All of the sudden, people start talkin' 'bout guns
Talkin' like they're going to war
'Cause they found something to die for
Start taking back what they stole
Sure beats every other option
It doesn't make a difference how we get it

Well do you really fuckin' get it?
No, no, no...

	

Submitted by

hoofbyte On May 23, 2002

Baby, I'm an Anarchist!

Thrash Unreal

Pints of Guinness Make You Strong

Walking Is Still Honest

Searching for a Former Clarity

57 Meanings

An error occured.

Sort by

by MeenoMoe

14y ago

This song is a critique of the leftist movement in general and the labor movement in particular, which is pretty trenchant coming from a very apparent lefty (for the record, I am as well). It's at least more self-aware and critical of leftist politics than most punk rock polemics. The lines about "we're all presidents, we're all congressmen, we're all cops in waiting, we're the workers of the world" is an acknowledgment that class divisions are imaginary and fungible and that today's dockworker or plumber might be tomorrow's authority figure holding down the next generation of working people. Gabel then talks about how debate is contextualized in starker, less personal terms, about "survival" and playing the system, about how the definition of the self is instead recast in terms of "a country...a people...a moral vision". The idea of arbitrary social and class divisions is reiterated in the refrain which, if you listen to it in context, is a criticism of movements that boil very personal politics down to "us against them" until "all of a sudden, people are talking about guns, talking like we're going to war because they've found something to die for". Like, how did we get there? We went form point A to point D with no stops in between and in doing so have missed the point of leftist politics, which is about building a better, freer society, not enriching yourself at someone else's expense.