Performer: Rush
Songwriters: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart
Original Release: Signals
Year: 1982
Definitive Version: Live Grace, 2004. The Count Floyd introduction is
quintessential. I always have to hear this song start with it now.
My sophomore year at Wabash,
when I was listening to Signals a lot, the must-see-TV show was The Day After.
I steadfastly—pointedly even—refused to watch it and hid in the library as Ed
and Jim and more than 100 million of their closest friends huddled around TVs
watching it. At the time, there was nothing more terrifying than the prospect
of nuclear war, and I didn’t want to watch a movie about it, because I knew how
bad it would be. What was the point?
Many years later, after my
curiosity at how others depicted the end of the world developed, I realized I
had to see it, and it was really cheesy. Of course, considering that it was a
TV movie from 1983, what was I expecting? The thing that grabbed me the most
about seeing it for the first time in 2005 was how it was far less tense and
horrifying than I had expected it to be.
I suppose this was partly
due to the cheesiness factor—the more cartoonish something looks, the easier it
is to discount it. But I think it had more to do with the fact that my
existential fears had changed. Nuclear war and global annhilation no longer was
the scariest thing I could imagine.
Two decades after The Day
After, I was flipping through the TV one evening and stumbled across a
documentary proclaiming the top 100 moments in televised history. As I started
to watch, I mentally made my own list and tried to guess the top 10. Let’s see
… Apollo 11, the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, the Challenger, JFK’s assassination,
9/11, the start of Desert Storm, Nixon’s resignation …
I was pretty close as it
turned out, and I nailed the No. 1 moment. It wasn’t my No. 1 moment, but as
soon as I saw the black title screen showing No. 2 as Apollo 11, I knew No. 1
was going to be 9/11.
Part of that no doubt was
due to the newness of the event. 9/11 wasn’t 3 years old yet; Apollo 11 was 35
years old. The average TV viewer barely remembers what happened last week, let
alone 35 years ago. When in doubt, OF COURSE, it would be the more recent
event. It was like ESPN’s countdown of the top athletes of the 20th Century in
1999. There was no drama, because there was no question that No. 1 was going to
be Michael Jordan, because no one remembered Jim Thorpe, and TV (let alone
ESPN) didn’t exist back then anyway.
As soon as the segment on
9/11 ended, another title screen came up that said “A Rebuttal,” and the show
gave the final word to Walter Cronkite. Cronkite said that in time, after the
visceral impact of 9/11 eroded, Apollo 11 would regain its spot atop the
rankings, because Apollo 11 represented man’s greatest accomplishment to date.
Apollo 11 was about hope and achievement—the best that we could be—and 9/11 was
all about fear and destruction—the worst that we could be. In the end, Cronkite
said, hope and achievement always win out.
I hope he’s right, but … I
don’t know. Given another decade of perspective, it’s clear that the United
States not only still hasn’t recovered from 9/11 but that man’s lesser
qualities seem to be winning the day.
This country has regressed
steadily, starting with requiring passports to go in and out of Canada, to
trying to build a wall blockading Mexico, to surveilling online correspondence
without a warrant, to allowing invasive body scanners in airports, to flying
unmanned drones over our own country and backing politicians openly advocating
torture, er, enhanced interrogation, and pre-emptive assassination of U.S.
citizens, er, targeted killings of terrorists.
How could this possibly
happen? There’s only one explanation: Since 9/11, the United States has become
a nation ruled by fear—fear of death, fear of those who look or think
different, fear of a lack of control.
At the time of The Day
After, I thought this song had a literal meaning—The Weapon was a nuke. It
wasn’t until years later, after I finally read 1984, that I realized I was
wrong. This song isn’t about 1984 per se, but it doesn’t take a genius to
envision Room 101 in Neil Peart’s lyrics.
I’m certain I’m closer to
the day I will die than the day I was born. I don’t have a death wish, but—now
closer to death—I’d rather lose my life than my dignity, and it’s becoming
apparent that I live in a nation where a majority definitely would choose the
former over the latter. It’s Patrick Henry turned on his head.
1984, the year, was 29 years
ago, but it seems the possibility of Oceania remains firmly in the future, and
the future is a lot closer than it ever has been before. Nuclear war? To me,
there’s nothing scarier than the totalitarian scenario of 1984 coming to fruition—where
every facet of your life is under surveillance and control, including your
secret heart. That’s the unthinkable.
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