Nitwitz

Perhaps it's wrong to color a person's perception about lyrics like this and it robs them of the experience of understanding what it's about. On the other hand, judging from the number of posts for DIMD and the nature of the subject matter, someone might as well do it.

I think the meaning behind unDeveloped lies between the external ideas and the individual thinking them.

I'll start by saying this seems to be about people who lived during the Cold War, or at least the stage is set during such a time period.

And when you hear the "crazy crazy way to define your life" I think it might be referencing people who sort of use insane events in order to define the time period they lived in. Kind of like how the "greatest generation" is defined as all the people who fought in World War II where millions died. And often people from that generation are defined by their military service and how they "served their country".

But this isn't really about WWII. More so talking about people who defined their life during a certain time period, and how Americans defined their life during the Cold War as being based around the conflict between the US and the soviet union. And there was so much fear based around atomic bombs, nuclear weapons (and there still is obviously), so much paranoia and people working in order to avert a nuclear disaster.

Point being, there are vast amounts of other ways in which a government could kill citizens of an opposing one or of their own. To assume that nuclear weapons are the only form of warfare that can really be harmful to us is very ignorant. And when I say this I'm not referring to arab terrorists strapping bombs to their bodies or flying planes into buildings. But there are perhaps far more complex ways of killing people that don't involve nuclear weapons as people thought of them during the Cold War.

And yet people are nitwitz because they assume that the only thing they have to fear is an atomic bomb and are ignorant of the other ways in which people can be killed. The whole "zip it up clear for public part" could describe diversionary tactics used during the Cold War maybe based around the STAR WARS defense that Reagan talked about in a speech.

And feeling like nothing's inside here, could be these people's heads or the viability of the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative). So the SDI was another sick maneuver? To hide to disguise? Or maybe it's referencing more current situations that mirror the past Cold War.

So defining your life based on these large scale events pertaining to our government (kind of like how people of the more current generation would view a time period before 9/11 and after 9/11) is thought to be crazy crazy crazy.

Not quite sure about the whole "hit this" lyric but here's some suggestions. Maybe because these people smoked marijuana in their youth and probably quit around the time of the Cold War or something? And smoking marijuana could remind them of the past. Or trying to find a way to slow time down? Limit time? Too high?

Maybe similar to 'Comedown' in that these people are on some sort of metaphorical drug they need to get off of in order to see the truth. So they're too high right now? Or they're supposed to hit some wall "this" in order to wake up from their dream.

These all could be wrong, not sure.

But they're the atomic kids who now forget about the situation they lived in during their youth. And they forget how such Cold War fears were used and how harmful they were to society, and also maybe even how unfounded they were? Yea, so the fears were acidic.

So what do queers have to do with this? I think it's the fact that around the time of the Cold War homosexuality was considered a mental illness and was listed as such in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). That's the manual psychologists/psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness in people, and it's constantly changing.

And so fast is the pace these people live in, they so quickly forget how things were in the past and seem to live day to day with no contemplation about how the past relates to the future (the present).

But even though just a few decades prior, homosexuality was considered a mental illness by our society (like schizophrenia, depression, etc), by a snap of the finger homosexuals have pride again. Those who forgot something...doomed to something it, I forget.

Not sure if what we're seeing inside here is inside him or inside them. But anyways it's like people have lost the appetite to examine what life is about and examine the past and how it relates to the present and future. Like they've lost the energy to understand anything that's not 6 feet in front of them.

He's feeling something inside him now? Traced from this Cold War time period? Engaged to the lies.

Kind of like connecting the dots between the past and the present, that's why it's "traced from another days" and the lies of the past are engaged to the lies of the present.

So people are continually only capable of the most basic, surface attention to world events and yet they define their life based on these events without even understanding them very well or questioning them. There may be a repetition to it all I suppose. In cycles.

I'm glad I wasn't alive during the Reagan years though...or we'll see?