Song 415: This week the playlist honors Us And Them by Pink Floyd, written by Roger Waters and Richard Wright, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. Warren James, as my first dorm roommate at NU, introduced me to the music of Pink Floyd because he really liked them, but what I heard didn't interest me at the time. When Dark Side of the Moon came along a few years later, though, it did grab me, and I felt it deserved all of the attention it got. This particular epoch paints a very clear picture of the simplistic, fearful authoritarian mindset that fuels all large-scale violent conflicts, up to and including major wars. The lyrics also make the point that theft underpins the us vs. them mentality. While this kind of hostile rhetoric never disappeared, lately it has gotten a lot louder, which makes this cut all the more meaningful for the present moment. Us? We're always the good ones, even if we start wars for oil. Them? They're always the bad ones, even when they feed the hungry. Listen, son, said the man with the gun, there's room for you inside. Well, If I Was You, I wouldn't go inside the war machine - better to recognize that at the core of the divisive Us And Them phrase lies a strategy as old as the Roman Empire: Divide and Conquer. If you don't want to be conquered, tune out the authoritarians sowing the division. On a side note, you can now find the If I Was You song video pinned to the top of my FB musician page if you just click on the title.
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