Reagan and World War III
As Punk crept into the national psyche it
became more visible; it was a dark plague that disrupted the illusion of
normalcy, a wake-up call that the Leave It To Beaver days of America are in the
books. Reagan’s red scare fear tactics had Americans conditioned that we were
on a brink of a nuclear war and if that didn't shake up your paranoia how, about Russian paratroopers awaiting invasion
orders; yes fools, World War 3 was lurking round the corner. My eldest brother Tom, a US Marine, made it
sound that war with the Commies was inevitable. In my mind he
was an expert in military matters. Like most other Americans, it was something
I worried about. I was unaware at the time, but with
the music I was identifying with coupled with the threat of human extinction I
started to develop existentialist leanings. Why would God allow such things to
happen? There was some far out Amazon tribe we were studying in Social Studies class, I remember
thinking how they would be affected by nuclear winter because the Superpowers didn’t get along. What did those people do to deserve that? Here it is 30 years later and it all seemed
like we’d been swindled by the powers that be. Was there ever a genuine threat of total annihilation? Sadly, that idea got recycled; America traded in the
Russian boogieman for the Muslim one. I bought that load of shit growing-up,
but not this time, thank-you-very-much.
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| Chuck Dukowski getting set for the Munich show. |
April of 2013: I was fortunate enough to tag-along with my favorite
band FLAG (Black Flag) for their 3-show European stint. The line-up consisted
of four former Black Flag members (Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowski, Dez Cadena,
and Bill Stevenson) with Descendents/ALL guitarist Stephen Eagerton. Chuck and
I had a couple of conversations about power and war, he asked me about my
first-hand experience of going through the 2011 revolution in Egypt. After Mubarak fell, the people were without police and a government;
that absence empowered ordinary citizens. He was interested in hearing how people
protected their neighborhoods and cleaned the city their own volition; Egyptians
embraced ownership. Without rules and rulers, it was astonishing to observe to
how well people behaved and took care of each other. Living in Egypt and
getting the opportunity to travel around the world over the past four years I
have come to a somewhat simplistic realization that most people just want to be
happy and left alone to live their lives, in short we want to be loved by
family and friends without outside factors dictating our lives. I would argue
that humans aren’t born wanting to hurt one another; we are conditioned to.
Chuck chimed in and said that most world leaders and power hungry individuals
are sociopaths. He made a point that many soldiers/fighters in third-world
conflicts don’t have enough money for food but carry high-priced weapons and
shoot rounds or costly bullets. The question is: who supplies these people
and what rewards do they hope to reap? Punk taught me not to accept answers at
face vale, but to dig deeper.
Special thanks to Ana Medina and Monica Zarazua for editing
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