The Dead Flag Blues

In the beginning, we are following an observer in the modern day.

"The car is on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides And a dark wind blows"

The car is society, and the fire is greed. If this car had a driver to control it, then perhaps it could be safely stopped and the fire extinguished. But with no driver, all it can do is run amok until a terrible car crash which will kill everyone involved. A sewer is designed to transport filth away from an area, but the lack of generosity (the "thousand lonely suicides" of optimists who discovered the West to have no place for their kind) has blocked them. The narrator thinks there is now way to escape the grime and filth of modern life. The "dark wind" is an omen of the future. He predicts complete disintegration of integrity and can see nothing but corporate whoredom.

"The government is corrupt And we're on so many drugs With the radio on and the curtains drawn"

This suggests to me that the narrator is very sceptical of the government's integrity and interests. "We're" (as in "everyone") is on so many drugs, sold to them for obscene profit by corporations because the corrupt government told everyone they needed them. They close their windows, through which they might get a clear view of the world, and listen to advertisements and pop music marketed and spoon-fed to them by the RIAA and co.

"We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine And the machine is bleeding to death"

Here he re-affirms what he said in the first section. He believes that there is no way to escape modern civilisation. No matter what he might do, it will surround him and then when it finally comes to a stop it will destroy everything with no regard.

"The sun has fallen down And the billboards are all leering And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles"

This gives the first impression of a Fallout-type world, but it easily describes any modern town in the West. Marketing is everywhere, and the narrator hates it. He hates that giant billboards (which represent selfishness and greed) are always displayed for absolutely everyone to see, but the flags (which represent comradeship and duty to others) are allowed to hang limp and obscured from view high up in the air on thin poles.

"It went like this: The buildings tumbled in on themselves Mothers clutching babies Picked through the rubble And pulled out their hair"

Here we take a shift back in time for a parallel plot. Now the narrator is describing the tale of the fall of the American Indians. Colonials and, later on, USAmericans used to utterly destroy the Indian towns and encampments and scalp them for profit due to governmental bounties. This is why the mothers are picking through rubble - they are collecting the scalps of dead Indians to claim the bounties on their scalps. The system had forced them into capitalism, so without money their babies will starve; this money can only come with the misery and death of others. He believes this is a parallel to modern society. The only difference is that instead of Whites it is Corporations, and instead of scalps it is free thought, and instead of destroying town it is hypnotism.

"The skyline was beautiful on fire All twisted metal stretching upwards Everything washed in a thin orange haze I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful - These are truly the last days""

This depicts the burning of an Indian village. This was a common tactic to get the women and children out of shelter, since they were easy targets. In the middle of this fire, two lovers stand face-to-face. There is no place for an emotion like love in the world of money and greed. So they give up fighting, and wither away in the fires of greed and selfishness.

"You grabbed my hand And we fell into it Like a daydream Or a fever"

Capitalism does not feel like "the real world". It is divorced from empathy, only concerned with making profit at all costs. It's a fever, dangerous and noticeable but which receives very little attention or concern from those that matter. In the Lovers' case, it's the ennui which their giving up their traditional life has caused. In your case, it may be your boss scoffing at fever being your reason for not coming to work. For the narrator, the fever is the blatant manipulation of people through marketing techniques and the lack of action from those same people to prevent it. They're so deep into the daydream fantasy world of capitalism they don't realise what's happened to them. Even the money is fiat - it's imaginary. It's not backed by anything.

"We woke up one morning and fell a little further down For sure it's the valley of death"

Sometimes, the lovers become aware of the truth. But they are too weak, and cannot bear to shoulder it - everybody is a fool, and everybody is willing to be conditioned to want to gain luxuries they are told they want to gain even at the expense of their own lives, happiness or integrity.

So they fall further down; they become cynical and hardened, and begin to take advantage of the people they slowly begin to hate. There is no going back from the valley of death. Now they can only go forwards, and forget helping others and treat it as a remnant of the past.

The story of the Indian lovers is a parallel to the story of the narrator; we can only come to the conclusion that he himself did the same thing.

"I open up my wallet And it's full of blood"

We leave the lovers and go back to the narrators. After telling his story of the Indian lovers who became everything that destroyed their own life, he examines his own life. Maybe up until that point he did not even know how bad he was, and - like Lady Macbeth and her hands - discovers that there is no money in his wallet. It's stuffed with notes, but those notes are not money, and they are not the happiness that we are told money and new things will always be able to bring us. There is only the blood of innocents, the despair of a million raped souls. There is only death, and selfishness, and greed, and horror.

That's my interpretation of this song. It's condemning corporations and the people who allow them to do what they do.