When Ronald Reagan famously told the National Association of
Evangelicals in 1983 that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire”, it might seem simply
like a neat turn of phrase. But when you consider that most members of NEA held to
a theology which interpreted the USSR as the mysterious “Gog” that would invade
Israel under imperial pretences (as per Ezekiel 38 and 39), then the quote
takes on a significant apocalyptic colouring. Given that Reagan informed California
legislators in 1971 that: “now that Russia has become communistic and
atheistic, now that Russia has set itself up against God, now it fits the description
of Gog perfectly”, it gives some insight into his way of thinking. And given
that Ezekiel predicted that “Gog” would be destroyed in a terrible rain of fire,
it's understandable that White House Chief-of-Staff Howard Baker told Reagan
that these beliefs “upset me” when the latter was enthusiastically propounding
his theory that Gog was Russia in 1988. Nobody likes to think that the man with
his finger on the button believes that God mandates the destruction of his
enemy – though, as Reagan said (and his actions proved), he certainly didn’t believe
that he was going to be the one to fulfil the prophecy.
The kind of dualistic thinking marked by the last gasps of
the Cold War vanished for a time, but made a major comeback after 9/11. George
W. Bush returned to an openly apocalyptic rhetoric with his discussions of an “Axis
of Evil” and open nods to biblical apocalypse by invoking the image of “an angel
guiding the storm”, while many saw his Middle East policy as driven by the "rapture" prophecy of dispensational Christians (almost certainly a charge wide of the mark). While the most extreme right-wing
thinkers in the US made its enemies into an apocalyptic “other” who must be
destroyed to save “freedom”, their enemies did the same –the United States was
seen as “the Great Satan”, whose destruction was inevitable and required to
bring about the ideal Islamic state on earth.
Of course, describing things in simple terms like this doesn’t
do either position justice (and simplifies major theological and political differences
between them) but as a number of commentators have noted, political
polarisation meant that all types of groups began to think apocalyptically. In
Richard Kelly’s surreal 2007 film Southland Tales, for example, every character is obsessed with their own form of millennial
hopes to the total exclusion of others. From the die hard Republicans
who view liberals as terrorists and engage in all “necessary” means to destroy
them, to the extreme Marxists who see the government as fascists and hope to bring
about a utopia through terrorist action; to Hollywood action star Boxer Santaros, who pens an (unwittingly) prophetic screenplay about the coming end of the world. Everyone, of course, has been
captured by the same type of thinking – and it’s exactly this sort of thinking
which is critiqued in Bright Eye’s “Four Winds”. Much like Cradle of Filth
yesterday, singer Conor Oberst cleverly reworks a number of key motifs from the
book of Revelation to critique the whole project of apocalyptic thought. The
four winds, restrained in Rev. 7 by four angels to protect the chosen of God, are
here unleashed to cause chaos in a corrupted and crazy world. This confusion is compounded by disturbing references to the effects of an unpopular
(and according to some, apocalyptic) war (There’s
bodies decomposing in containers tonight).
America, the song implies, needs apocalypse – whether it be the
“Whore of Babylon” of Christian thinking, or the “Great Satan” of Islamic apocalypse. Yet
for Oberst, all forms of religion are merely plasters on the wounds of the
world (The Bible’s blind, the Torah’s
deaf, the Qur’an’s mute/ If you burned them all together you’d be close to the
truth). There is no answer either in the psychic community of Cassadaga, or
in the heartlands of America, which bury the truth of the destruction of native
communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries beneath a veneer of
conventionality (...old Dakota where a genocide sleeps...).
In the same way as W.B. Yeats’ 1919 poem “The Second Coming”,
which used apocalypse as an allegory for the postwar situation in Europe, so
Oberst imagines a dark version of America in which apocalypse means misery, not
hope. As Yeats’ poem asks in its horrified
conclusion: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/ Slouches
towards Bethlehem to be born?”. “Four Winds” appropriates this line, but, if
anything, gives it an even more negative spin: the beast is the “sum of men”,
whose unwinding and revelation will bring nothing but total destruction. Any hope for the end to this destructive,
apocalyptic polarisation seems to be dashed by the song’s music video, which
features the band performing their prophetic message as a State Fair, only be
booed off and assaulted as the tone of their message becomes clear. It’s a
depressing, but far from unrealistic, conclusion which makes their point
nicely - America is too polarised to move beyond its engrained apocalyptic thinking.
Four Winds (Oberst,
2007)
Your class, your caste, your
country, sect, your name or your tribe
There's people always dying trying
to keep them alive
There are bodies decomposing in
containers tonight
In an abandoned building where
A squatter's made a mural of a
Mexican girl
With fifteen cans of spray paint
in a chemical swirl
She's standing in the ashes at the
end of the world
Four winds blowing through her
hair
But when great Satan's gone, the
whore of Babylon
She just can't sustain the
pressure where it's placed
She caves
The Bible's blind, the Torah's
deaf, the Qur'an is mute
If you burned them all together
you'd be close to the truth still
They're poring over Sanskrit under
Ivy League moons
While shadows lengthen in the sun
Cast on a school of meditation
built to soften the times
And hold us at the centre while
the spiral unwinds
It's knocking over fences,
crossing property lines
Four winds cry until it comes
And it's the sum of man
Slouching towards Bethlehem
A heart just can't contain all of
that empty space
It breaks, it breaks, it breaks
Well, I went back to my rented
Cadillac and company jet
Like a newly orphaned refugee,
retracing my steps
All the way to Cassadaga to
commune with the dead
They said, "You'd better look
alive"
And I was off to old Dakota where
a genocide sleeps
In the black hills, the bad lands,
the calloused east
I buried my ballast, I made my
peace
Heard four winds levelling the pines
But when great Satan's gone, the
whore of Babylon
She just can't remain with all
that outer space
She breaks, she breaks, she caves,
she caves
Listen on Spotify: Apopalypse: Apocalyptic Advent Calendar
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