Sleep Now In The Fire

The world is my expense The cost of my desire Jesus blessed me with its future And I protect it with fire So raise your fists and march around Dont dare take what you need I'll jail and bury those committed And smother the rest in greed Crawl with me into tomorrow Or i'll drag you to your grave I'm deep inside your children They'll betray you in my name

Lets start by defining a narrator for whose expense the world is. For this analysis, I will assume it is anyone who would value greed over humanity, and we will further define this as we go by looking at what this person is saying.

“The World is my expense, the cost of my desire. Jesus blessed me with its future and I protect it with fire.” This person is saying they don’t care if it costs the world to achieve their desire. They say that they know Jesus has promised them the fruit of this desire, and they will “protect it with fire” or protect it with force, or more bluntly, take what they want with force.

“So raise your fists and march around – Don’t dare take what you need” Go ahead, yell, scream, I don’t care, just as long as you “don’t… take what you need” or take anything from me… since my desire is to have things, by you taking it from me, you are getting in my way.

“I’ll jail and buy those committed and smother the rest in greed.” If you are so committed to taking what you need, Ill kill you or throw you in jail. The more simple minded ones however, I can just dangle a dollar bill in their face and they will be happy. Or better put, I will turn their eyes from me by turning their eyes towards all the things they think they want.

“Crawl with me into tomorrow or ill drag you to your grave” Similar to the last sentence, if you do not come along, I will kill you.

“I’m deep inside your children, they’ll betray you in my name” Even if you survive me, and are not blinded with greed, you will die, and before they have a chance to object, I will have your children following me.

“Hey! Hey! Sleep now in the fire”

I will get to this further in my discussion.

The lie is my expense The scope with my desire The party blessed me with its future And i protect it with fire I am the nina, the pinta, the santa maria The noose-man, the rapist, the fields overseer The agents of orange The priests of hiroshima The cost of my desire Sleep now in the fire

“The lie is my expense, the scope of my desire.” An expense can best be described by putting it into context. A new printing press is an expense for a publishing company. A new stadium is an expense for a football team. Your bills are an expense for you. The lie is my expense – I will pay a lie (I will lie to you) in order to get what I want (the scope of my desire).

“The party blessed me with its future, and I protect it with fire” The party (whatever organization I am involved with) has blessed me with the ability to do this to you, and I will not sit idly as you ruin my ambition – I will kill you if you try and stop me (protect it with fire).

“I am the nina, the pinta, the santa maria (the ships Columbus found America with)” I found this, therefore, it is mine. (What did I find? I found this think which I am driving for, this thing which I desire).

“[I am] The noose-man, the rapist, the fields overseer. [I am] the agents of orange, the priests of Hiroshima.” Lets start with the priests of Hiroshima. The priest could be a spiritual guide. That would not fit at all with the tone of this song though. Suddenly I am the one who cares about the people in Hiroshima? What if priest was more like the spiritual judge? I judged the people of Hiroshima, I then condemned them to their death. I kill those people to accomplish my goals. The noose-man, rapist and fields overseer then, make more sense if the rapist is not a sexual rapist, but a rapist of humanity. It could be said that a country has raped another if they take their resources and use their people. It could be said that I am the rapist if I use you for my means and disregard the consequences. I am the fields overseer. I direct the work to be done. I force YOU to do the work as I see fit.

“-the cost of my desire – sleep now in the fire” These are the consequences of my desire, and now you sleep in the fire because of them(you are probably dead if you are sleeping in fire).

“Hey! Hey! Sleep now in the fire” Yeah, sleep in the fire now (you are dead, once I have taken what I need from you, in fact, probably because I have taken what I need from you).

For it's the end of history It's caged and frozen still There is no other pill to take So swallow the one That makes you ill The nina, the pinta, the santa maria The noose and the rapist, the fields' overseer The agents of orange The priests of hiroshima The cost of my desire Sleep now in the fire

“For it’s the end of history. It’s caged and frozen still.” He seems to leave the narrator’s voice for a second here. The end of history, and not just the end of history, but this end is caged and frozen (unchangeable).

“There is no other pill to take, so swallow the one that makes you ill.” I, and my way are the only options you have (sucka!), so looks like you are stuck with what I am doing.

“the Nina, the pinta, etc…” Already described

So what is Zach saying?? That our world is being raped (some people are taking so much advantage of others), that our people are being forced to follow along this path, by threat of death or jail.

Lets put this into some context, and see what he is saying more closely. (Warning, this may be offensive)

He has obviously made several references to America (the nina, pinta, Hiroshima, etc). He seems to be saying that America is pretty much abusing the rest of the world. I won’t go into the policies of it, but it could be argued that we force countries to open up their markets to us so that we can sell them our goods (which are mass produced) cheaper than they can sell their own goods to their own people, thus putting their own people out of business, and raising our corporate salaries by 2%. Further, we abuse the labor laws of other countries to produce our goods for a fraction of the cost which our laws state they should be produced at. Thus, people in foreign countries earn very little for the amount of money they make for the corporations they work for. That is not entirely just because they make a $50 shoe for 10 cents an hour. They make $50 shoes in mass quantities so they can be sold at a very high volume, so that many markets don’t have a choice but to buy $50 shoes (how many shoes can you find for $10?). The worst of it is if we here, in the country where this is occurring in any way try to stop this, (first we are called anti American) if we do anything that would actually stop it (picket the companies, for example) we are thrown in jail. Zach seems to comment that the only way to even try and stop this is to do something that would land you in jail or dead. It does seem that no one cares how unequally our country treats other countries, at least no one cares enough to vote for politicians who would enact laws against it, or to find other constructive ways of stopping this abuse of other countries (I mean, @#%$, I need shoes too). Zach seems to conclude violent action (which he even says would be pointless) is the only recourse to this problem. He concludes, eventually, because of this, we will all end up sleeping in the fire, as a consequence of these ambitions.

Please remember, I do not know Zach's mind, this is just a guess at what he is trying to say. Regardless of the particulars, this song still says a very important thing.