Self-referential post

[unixronin]

This post, oddly enough, is not about some other subject that has caught my eye, but about the "Now Playing" selection, Chris de Burgh's Crusader.

Now, I like the song.  I think it's a great song, and it has some very on-the-mark commentary on politics and religion tossed in there almost as throwaways.  But it treats Saladin as a cowardly fool, his Saracen army as drunken, unthinking barbarians, and the Crusaders as holy and noble to a man.

High on a hill, in the town of Jerusalem
There stood Saladin, the King of the Saracens;
Whoring and drinking and snoring and stinking, around him his army lay
Secure in the knowledge that they had won the day.

A messenger came, blood on his feet and a wound in his chest,
"The Christians are coming!" he said, "I have seen their cross in the west!"
In a rage Saladin struck him down with his knife,
He said "I know that this man lies,
"They quarrel too much -- the Christians could never unite!"

Chris de Burgh, Crusader

This has always bothered me.  What's more, it recalls the old cliche of "We're invincible and we're right, because God is on our side."  This is far from an uncommon belief:

All the hills are peaceful now, but the graveyards tell the tale
And they stretch their silent crosses far and wide
It was 1916, in July, when madness walked the land
Both friend and foe had God upon their side

The Irish Rovers, First Day on the Somme

It seems any time someone starts claiming some deity is on their side, bloodshed and mayhem are going to surely follow.  But we keep on doing it, and keep on falling for it.  And we keep on with the conceit that because we're divinely blessed, anyone who opposes us must automatically be benighted, godless barbarians with no concept of honor, personal hygeine, or good TV programming.  (Not that we, by all the evidence, can honestly be said to have much to brag about on that score.)  So certain are we of this that we'll gladly up and slaughter our own neighbors over even trivial (in the real world) differences of religious doctrine.  (Read up on the Albigensian Crusade sometime, and the origins of the term/epithet "buggery".)

Then the fool said, "Oh you wise men, you really make me laugh,
With your talk of vast persuasion and searching for the path,
There is only greed and evil in the men that fight today,
The song of the crusader has long since gone away..."

Chris de Burgh, Crusader

Here's the heart of the problem:  Nothing's changed, really.  It's not that the spirit of the Crusader has gone away; it's that while the individual knight in the field may have been an honest, dutiful man doing what he believed he must, just as most of the soldiers fighting on both sides of our wars are today, those who led the Crusades led them mostly out of greed, evil and vanity ... just as most of our wars are led today.  And then as now, the motivation, the cause the goal of war was decided upon first, and then the "facts" were shaped around it to provide a justification.  Everyone knew the Saracens -- who had superior literacy, medicine, mathematics and sanitation to "civilized" Europe at the time -- were Godless heathens, just like everyone knew that Jews were greedy, crooked cheats, "Christ-killers", an "under-race", and Gypsies were filthy, disease-spreading thieves.

We have always been at war with Oceania.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Well I can't help but wonder now, Willie McBride
Do all those who lie here know just why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
Did you really believe this war would end all wars?

But the suffering the sorrow the glory the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain
For William McBride it's all happened again
And again and again and again and again.
    -- Eric Bogle, "William McBride (http://www.siliconglen.com/Scotland/9_3_9.html)"

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Now, I always see that song as heavy with irony, especially if you look at all the "star chamber" sorts of references, etc. And reading between the lines of the "Big Secret Publishing" reference on the liner notes, his Orwell references in other songs, etc. I see it as stating *precisely* what you say in your last paragraph.

But then, I very rarely take Chris de Burgh at face value, unlike 99.99% of his fans. His stuff is just too full of subtle references that are full of cynicism. He just likes to hide in plain sight.

There's nothing like that it B5, either, right? ;-)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, never. Not a thing. ;)