This is a hidden 1980’s gem. ‘Mike' was Mike Rutherford from Genesis, one of the most successful bands of anytime, which issued forth three huge talents: Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford. Five of them (not Phil Collins) went to Chaterhouse, one of the more famous English Public Schools. Those were the days.
The song is set during an invasion of an unspecified country by another unspecified country. The Other Guys are winning, and they are going to win and stay won. Rutherford says the song is the words of a father from the future advising his son, and it could read that way. Whichever, the first three lines the first verse set the scene with incredible economy:
Take the children and yourself
And hide out in the cellar
By now the fighting will be close at hand
Don't believe the church and state
And everything they tell you
Believe in me, I'm with the high command
The third verse is what set me off...
Swear allegiance to the flag
Whatever flag they offer
Never hint at what you really feel
Teach the children quietly
For some day sons and daughters
Will rise up and fight while we stood still
The sad thing is that sons and daughters will not rise up. The same forces and threats that made it sensible for the parents to stay quiet will be present when the children are being raised, and be the same reason for the children to stay quiet. If you don’t fight back during the invasion, you won’t get to fight back ever. Look at history: the few times a population has fought back and won after an initial defeat, there was someone else to help the fight. The best an occupied population can do is guerrilla warfare, and that has a pretty poor track record. Quick, think of a guerrilla war which won were the guerrillas were not financed by a third party. Nope. None. Populations do not ‘rise up’. They stay down. (Any application of these remarks to the USA, Sweden or Germany is entirely unwarranted.) Because what strength do the sons and daughters have that their parents didn’t. Or were the parents tragically weak and ill-informed in some crucial way?
Those first three lines though.
Swear allegiance to the flag. So we’re going to rally and fight back?
Whatever flag they offer. Not your flag, their flag. Because they are going to win.
Never hint at what you really feel. That’s how complete the defeat is going to be.
At any time someone is going to feel that their world is being invaded. I felt that way about the PC thing in the 1980’s and about climate change / migration / woke-ness / identity politics and all that other virtue-signalling stuff. Doubtless the virtue-signallers feel invaded by Boris Johnson. Remainers feel invaded by Leavers. Republicans feel invaded by Democrats. The gilets jaune feel invaded by Macron. Swedish men and women are being invaded by unemployable gangster migrants (in 2019 there were 252 explosions in Sweden. The IRA was never that prolific.) Germans were invaded by unemployable migrants in 2016. Anyone over forty feels that Millennials are a foreign group. Decent Germans feel that the AfD is invading them, and decent French Liberals feel invaded by Marine Le Pen. All by herself. Old-school superhero comic / movie fans feel invaded by Bree Larson in Captain Marvel, but not by Gal Godot in Wonder Woman.
That’s why there’s something timeless about this song.
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