This is a post I wrote on Facebook in 2023. It came up somehow today, and I realized that I really wanted to have it on my own site for historical purposes, for my summary of jingoism if for no other reason.

TL:DR; I’ve wrestled for a long time over my internal reaction to some of Rush’ lyrics: what bugs me about a certain set of songs, even though I like them? This is a short essay on “Territories,” a song whose mode of expression I find to be overly simplistic even though the song is good and I even agree with it in a general sense.

Someone posted a video to “Territories” recently, and something about it finally clicked: I like the song, and the sentiment behind it is unassailable (wouldn’t it be nice if we could all try to get along?) but the song’s method of expression feels peurile. Peart was a big thinker and a good person, I believe, but he had a tendency that became really obvious from Power Windows on, to make more grandiose statements about how right his points of view were.

It’s fair for him to think his points of view were right, of course; if he felt they were wrong, he should change them! I have no issue with his self-assurance or his confidence, and honestly, I wish I had the same pride of self.

But at the same time… the man who planted a flag with “Freewill” turned more and more harsh to people with whom he disagreed, over time. “Freewill” and other songs like it expressed his viewpoint, with very gentle needling toward those with different ideas, with Freewill being probably the most pointed of them, even then understanding that others made different choices.

But somewhere around Grace Under Pressure, Peart seems to have had enough, and started writing more detailed Jeremiads. For me, these were all right - often written quite well, from an analytical point of view (well, my analytical point of view, at least!), and often easy to agree with personally, but they worked best when they were introspective. Songs like “Everyday Glory,” or “The Pass,” or “Bravado,” or even “Heresy,” for example, are internally-focused and if they have a demand, it’s for an internal response.

Later on, though, you get whole albums aimed at people and ideas. Vapor Trails, Snakes and Arrows, and Clockwork Angels, while stellar albums with excellent writing, can be interpreted as being rather… shall we say “negative?”… to people who were religious for whatever reason or in whatever way, or people who held nationalistic fervor in nearly any fashion.

It’s understandable, of course: it’s easy to turn religion into a club (and I can’t imagine how many people offered Peart “thoughts and prayers” after the death of his wife and daughter, and I’m also sure that some “well-meaning” morons suggested that if he’d been a believer that tragedy might have been avoided.) And nationalistic fervor is also easy to pervert into jingoism, a sentiment Territories addressed head on.

Look: I am not a fan of jingoism whatsoever. To me, a patriot says, “I love my country.” A nationalist says, “I love my country, right or wrong,” and a jingoist says “My country is never wrong.” I don’t fear patriots or, really, nationalists. A jingoist is a horror, convinced that whatever corporate sins their country commits were deserved by their victims. Jingoists tend to die unaware, or live to regret their jingoism. I’d avoid being a jingoist. PSA over.

But Territories also ignored something really important, to its detriment: causation.

Here’s part of the lyrics:

We see so many tribes -- overrun and undermined  
While their invaders dream of lands they've left behind  
Better people -- better food -- and better beer  
Why move around the world when Eden was so near?

Very well written, but… the problem is that the second line implies something that’s relatively rare in human history. Usually, tribal migration - when states invade each other, or when literal communities expand for territory - isn’t from such simple motivations. “We’re here, they’re there, let’s go there and take what’s theirs” is something that happens .. hardly ever. (We can certainly find examples, even in recent history, but over the span of all history and all conflict, it’s still pretty rare. Just because we know of examples of this mode of thought doesn’t mean it’s a dominant cause.)

Most wars like this are caused through desperation and scarcity on the part of the invader: population explosion, or food scarcity, for example. Even the Germans, in the last 90 years, expanded on the initial basis of lebensraum, with that basis extended to a host of other, far more horrifying causes. (It started off as lebensraum, and was then converted into “Not only do we need room to live, we need those people as slaves, justified by their status as low humans.” They would have tried to kill me out of hand as a low human. Go figure.)

Even in cases where expansion takes place successfully - migration from there to here - the characterization of the original homelands being “Eden” is unfair. It’s natural for humans, all humans, to mythologize the past. Who wouldn’t suggest that the “good old days” weren’t, without careful analysis? Most of us, I dare say, know exactly what is meant when “the good old days” is invoked as a phrase, and few of us think, “wait, the good old days weren’t actually all that great” on first hearing it. Most healthy people don’t see “the past” as a pure source of trauma, even if it would be considered so under examination.

The last stanza is even more myopic:

They shoot without shame  
In the name of a piece of dirt  
For a change of accent  
Or the color of your shirt  
Better the pride that resides  
In a citizen of the world  
Than the pride that divides  
When a colorful rag is unfurled

… Again, very effective writing but it’s also not representative of the typical invader that this song skewers. Let’s consider Germany again, because the example is so clear and is so common for most of humanity:

Why did the Germans shear the people they considered subhuman? One of the first things they did to their victims - the Jews, the Roma, homosexuals, other such cultural outliers - was remove their hair, their clothing, their jewelry, replacing them with simple general labels and numbers. (“You are not Schlomo Goldstein, you are now L-18274, and a Jew.”) It’s been argued - successfully, in my opinion - that they did so to enable those Germans with some remaining shred of humanity to see the Jews, the Roma, etc., as “no longer human,” to make it such that any atrocity committed against those poor souls was not a crime against other humans, but similar to how one might eliminate vermin, instead.

Even modern military training uses similar approaches: you don’t shoot at the opposing soldier, you shoot at a nameless, identity-less enemy, because it’s natural for humans to empathize. Soldiers at war have to be trained to ignore that innate empathy, because otherwise they aren’t effective soldiers, and game theory dictates that a country without an effective army will be defeated and destroyed by a country with an effective army. It’s unfortunate, but again, borne out with many, many examples in history.

And it’s not as simple as “a piece of dirt,” or “an accent,” or “the color of your shirt.” It might look that way on the surface - after all, a German or Japanese (or Iraqi, or Ukrainian) accent is quite an easy identifier when otherwise people might look similar. But “a piece of dirt” is silly; nobody that I know of has ever gone to war simply over geographical location. Invasions are to take possession of resources. That’s not “over a piece of dirt,” that’s a war of displacement; it’s still gross, especially in a modern world where we should be able to provide resources for a fulfilled world, but wars of displacement are still clinically understandable, and Peart isn’t even trying.

I understand and agree with the sentiment behind Territories. I like the song; the music’s quite good (even if I wish Geddy had used a bass other than the Wal.) And the idea of humanity living in peace, with all of us neighbors rather than competitors, is quite attractive; I’d love to see a world where a hungry nation knew that all it had to do was ask, rather than conquer, to know that it had a way to survive.

But the way it’s expressed just feels like Peart is preaching to us, his audience, and even though I agree, I find myself resenting the way it’s expressed.