Hearken back to Devo’s 3rd studio album FREEDOM OF CHOICE,please!
Specifically the last line: Freedom from choice is what you want!
Predicated on the assumption that freedom of choice is what you’ve got, the song posits the theory that the human race would rather hand its freedom over to the man-baby Booji Boy, made-to-order Bond villain Klaus Schwab—whose book The Great Reset came on the scene so conveniently timed with the inception of covid’s well rehearsed worldwide routine of “Sit down and shut up!” via mandatory lockdowns and mask orders—than suffer the eternal vigilance required of a free people.
Just as there are those who would be happy to own nothing and live in a government pod whilst wearing their Google glasses to exist more meta than in nature there are many who would rather die on their feet than live on the knees the World Economic Forum has in store for them. In other words, one size fits all-ism is a recipe for disaster. As have the pharma-gov conglomerate that tyrannized us by fear that past 3 years, DEVO itself is guilty of conflating a certain percentage of the population as the whole. Analyzing the perhaps irreparable damage done to the economy, not to mention the infrastructure of our souls, the past 3 years of international lockstep covid policy should be evidence enough that this is so.
For more evidence, see my last post on the Update of the Swedish outcome compared to the rest of the world who locked down as if it were some kind of international plan, heaven forefend.
But then again, the agitprop of the band DEVO can’t be pinned down so easily. Were they sane in an insane world or just faking? Saying one thing while meaning another? Was that really Klaus Schwab sticking his Internationalist fork into Booji Boy’s mom’s toaster?
The observable devolution of society breeds doubt of each of our own’s grasp on rationality, which is probably why I’m endeavoring to connect an old Neo Punk phenomenon of the mid-70s to the present to some of the pivotal events of these latter daze as if they were more Nostradamus than subterranean new wave sensation cast in amber.
I can only speculate as to the reason why.
Perhaps the more reality becomes like a night at the Grand Guignol the more we long for meaningful patterns, pounding drums, driving bass lines, spacy synths and soaring lyrics to keep us from drowning in the endless headlines of despair: a white noise method to cancel a world so grounded in absurdity it’s become intolerable.
Even in the correction are tributaries connecting with the reality we’ve turned our back on. Devolution has a definition with the MAGA-or-Bust crowd wholly different than the Akron-based band’s guiding principle, wherein Trump is still in charge and all the sturm and drang (see the current world based on absurdity that’s come to pass) is just a reason to sit back and eat popcorn whilst you enjoy the show. The hairline cracks in the egg leading back to the chicken come at us so hard and fast that no one but Devo themselves could come up with some way to conceptually subvert the subversion.
Who else has done a cover so X-File’s-aliciously bullseyed to the Peter Strzok disinformational version of the truth? ie “I live a life of danger for the FBI!” When in actuality Special Agent Strzok was just a Spud Boy looking to insinuate his pole into Lisa Page’s hole by impressing her with a bastardized version of his favorite line from the Rolling Stone’s, talking the talk of the imminent danger of Crossfire Hurricane when for realz he walked right into the safe space of an “insurance policy” of lies made up to mitigate the effectiveness of a president who, by the ides of the unelected deep state, was never meant to be elected, nor dreamed of in their collective worst nightmares. Who, coincidentally, ushered in the Warp Sped Operation that, some say, scrambled the DNA of all those partaking.
Regardless of original intention, we twist others’ meaning to suit our own ends to try and make sense in the swirling dust motes of chaos that make up each our own’s brief dance in the sun if for no other reason than it is fun and takes our mind off our particular troubles if only for a while. Take a chance on a brand new dance sometime to twist away the gates of steal. There is nothing new under the sun. What it is, was and always has been…the beginning was the end of everything NOW.
Even if the center cannot hold, are we not men?
Thanks, Marta,
I wanna be DEVO the band, not the crumbling society! Anyhow. Just started fixating on DEVO. Gates of Steel is one of my all time favorites songs.
Great piece Ted, thank you!