A Song for the War/Election Math Problem

This week's song is about the mathematical problem with the war leading up to the election: the fewer casualties we take in the months before the election (and of course I'm all about fewer casualties), then the more likely it is that John "100 Years" McCain gets elected, which means the war lasts longer, which means we take more casualties.

It's like that anti-drug commercial from the early 1990s of the yuppie in his office staring up after doing a line saying "I do coke... so I can work longer... so I can make more... so I can do more coke... so I can work longer... etc."

Enjoy Mathematics of the Dead.

Max and the Marginalized is the only rock band in the progressive blogosphere, and therefore the best one! They write and record a song a week and post them here. Go to their outposts on Facebook or MySpace for tour dates. Right click this and select "save link as" to download this song.

Mathematics of the Dead

Paint a picture by the numbers
Ink the sky in synthetic blue
Strategize statistics much too good to all be true
Keep the count declining
Mushroom clouds have silver linings too
For you, the battlefield and the ballot box are two
Sides of one bad equation
One life saved is two dead later on
In 100 years of John, carry the 1, carry it on

On and on, manipulate the space between the X and Y
Cross out all those T's and put those dots on your I's
A calculation simplified enough to wrap my head
Around the mathematics of the dead

A manufactured downtick
No it isn't too far-fetched to grasp
A tiny children's band-aid on a gaping gangrene gash
Bring out the substitute
Send more boots and pull them back to base
These figures look good on their face
Run them in place, run them in place, just in case

Manipulate the space between the X and the Y
I'm crossing all my fingers with the wool on my eyes
A calculation simplified enough to wrap my head
Around the mathematics of the dead

My oh my, it's very temporary just a matter of time
And I wish that I wasn't skeptical enough to roll my eyes
At statistics ever-tilted by design to stay ahead
Beyond the mathematics of the dead

Comments

[FZliveson]

Brilliant work. Gotta hope there are thinkers out here,
who will take it in, absorb it and then DO SOMETHING

Take a look at; DACHAULIED; "The Dachau Song," written in 1938 by two Dachau prisoners,
Jura Soyfer and Herbert Zipper.Tragically similar in its bite. And, it is a warning that
we need to be aware of the caution our forebearers dictated in forming this government.
If we do not mistrust government it will dictate and......

Dachaulied; the first verse, (I can't find a translation of the whole song from German)
Can't find a full translation.

Barbed wire, loaded with death
is drawn around our world.
Above a sky without mercy
sends frost and sunburn.
Far from us are all joys,
far away our homeland, far away our women,
when we march to work in silence
thousands of us at the break of day.
But we have learned the solution of Dachau
and became as hard as steel:
Be a man, comrade,
stay a human being, comrade,
do a good job, get to it, comrade,
for work, work makes you free!

Does the phrase "Arbeit macht frei" (work shall make you free)
remind you of any Rovian or Busian or Rumsfeldian or Bullwalrusian
twist of logic and phrase?

[FZliveson]

Great, powerful, nauseating lyrics.
In the olden-days, the days of WWII when the Nazis had a slogan posted above each entry to
their concentration camps saying: Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Shall Set You Free)
In the olden-days, when THEY were the bad guys millions of innocents were being killed and
the propaganda flowed.

In the olden-days (1938), two members of the Dachau Concentration Camp wrote another song (similar in its cutting sarchasm to the lyrics in "Mathematics of the Dead." Those two were Jura Soyfer and Herbert Zipper. Here is the first verse. Think of the lives lost and the justifications, orations and the drumbeat of commercial advertisements and lobbiests when you read these words.

Dachaulied, verse 1:
Barbed wire, loaded with death
is drawn around our world.
Above a sky without mercy
sends frost and sunburn.
Far from us are all joys,
far away our homeland, far away our women,
when we march to work in silence
thousands of us at the break of day.
But we have learned the solution of Dachau
and became as hard as steel:
Be a man, comrade,
stay a human being, comrade,
do a good job, get to it, comrade,
for work, work makes you free!

I have not been able to get a translation of the rest of this song. But, with
Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld being great propagandists of our American days,
it would behoove us to make note of the twists and turns of phrase, which so
insidiously influence our thoughts, our actions and our inactions.
Chilling fucking stuff, Dachaulied. Those who do not heed history are doomed
to repeat it.

[SolarPowerGuy]

Brilliant observation, guys. The "surge" will magically turn into an "escalation" come 2009.

[WadeNYC]

Brilliant, Max! Joe Scarborough made a great point on "Real Time" with Bill Maher last night when asked who he wants answering the phone at 3 a.m. in the White House. His answer: Colin Powell, because General Powell knows that military personnel are not "toy soldiers" for politicians to play with, and he would send them into battle only as an absolutely necessary and last resort. How many families and lives have been utterly destroyed to indulge Bush's and Cheney's insane fantasy? The Vietnam War ultimately destroyed LBJ. He returned to Texas and lived out a sad, tortured life. Bush will return to Texas and never give it a second thought, secure in his delusion that he did what Jesus told him to do.

[jcboston]

I think you're right Max and it's a tragedy, the militias are waiting and sitting down and our troops are on their bases, and not out on patrols like they used to be,

lower casualties are the result and we're still in Iraq