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.
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.