I have to admit, I haven’t been very kind to Megadeth throughout my years as a fan of metal. I don’t know why, but I think I’ve been too spoiled by Maiden to really pay them much heed. But lately I have I re-listened to some of their songs with a more critical perspective, and I have to say I’m impressed. One song in particular stands out above most of their others, in my opinion – “Foreclosure of a Dream” on the 1992 album Countdown to Extinction. To me, it is more than just a commentary on the cold impersonal nature of the modern capitalist society. It is also a historical narrative. I’ll explain this assertion whilst I explicate the song below.
The central thesis to this post will be that the song described the Great Depression in the United States, and hints at the rise of men such as Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Wallace.
Rise so high, yet so far to fall.
Obvious enough, I think. The 1920’s had been “Roaring.” From this period of unprecedented wealth and prosperity, the United States and the world plunged into the hitherto unknown poverty of the 1930’s.
A plan of dignity and balance for all.
Political breakthrough, euphoria’s high.
After it was realised that the Depression wasn’t going to end any time soon, the American electorate turned against the Hoover/Coolidge Republicans and threw their support behind the patrician from New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He campaigned on a promise to “end the tyranny of the economic royalists” and fulfill the true meaning of the American Dream – the ability to live one’s life with freedom from poverty, hunger, disease, etc. The spirit of optimism which swept the nation was unprecedented, indeed “euphoric.”
More borrowed money, more borrowed time.
Backed in a corner, caught up in the race.
Means to an end ended in disgrace.
Perspective is lost in the spirit of the chase.
This passage alludes again to the 1920’s. The prosperity of that era was built on lies. Speculators would borrow money to buy stocks not on the dividends they might pay out, but because they expected the price to raise even further, allowing them to sell again and turn a tidy profit. Many actually lost the perspective of what it meant to be responsible corporate citizens; they set out to screw both the customers and the employees in the name of making a dollar.
Foreclosure of a dream,
Those visions never seen,
Until all is lost,
Personal holocaust.
Foreclosure of a dream.
For most Americans, the Great Depression was an economic holocaust. Everything for which they had worked for generations vanished in a matter of weeks. There was no work available, no money to buy food, no land to plough, and nobody to help them…until the New Deal was ushered in.
Barren land that once filled a need,
Are worthless now, dead without a deed.
Slipping away from an iron grip,
Nature’s scales are forced to tip,
The heartland cries, loss of all pride.
The Midwestern US, long known as the breadbasket of the continent, suffered a terrible environmental calamity at the same time as the Great Depression destroyed American economic life. The great “Dust Bowl” was an extended period of drought which plagued much of the North American continent in the 1930’s. With no rainfall, water tables were quickly depleted by over-farming, and the soils became parched Great wind gusts picked up topsoil and blew it around the continent. Houses were literally buried under clouds of dirt, and thousands starved.
To leave ain’t believing, so try and be tried.
Insufficient funds, insanity and suicide.
Other victims simply left the area. So many Oklahomans migrated to California in this period that it became a legendary event in MAerican history. (Just about everything you read in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath has some basis in truth in this case.) These “Okies”, it has been argued, actually became the nucleus around which the modern, vibrant California we know today was formed.
The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no…'Read my lips
The inclusion of this speech by George HW Bush is interesting. For those who don’t remember, it was given in 1988 when Bush accepted the nomination as the Republican candidate for President. The full sound byte reads thusly: The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again. And I'll say to them: 'Read my lips -- No. New. Taxes.
It was tax money which alleviated the plight of millions of Americans in the Great Depression. During the Reagan/Bush years, government programs were assaulted and help to those who needed it cut dramatically. Tax became a dirty word, and a stigma of being soft and weak was placed on Social and Economic Democracy. (Bush ended up raising taxes after all and got beaten by Clinton in 1992 mostly because of it)
Now with new hope some will be proud.
This is no hoax, no one pushed out.
Men like Henry A. Wallace (Sec. Agriculture, 1932-40, Vice President of the United States 1940-44, Sec. of Commerce 1944-46) believed there was a better America possible than the one he had seen in the 1920’s. Prosperity did not necessarily require greed and exploitation. Instead, he was motivated by Christian principles of helping those in need, self sacrifice, and looking out for the general welfare of the community. He and other New Dealers offered hope to a nation which needed it so badly. (Wallace was actually more popular in Latin America than the US – thousands of people would hang off his every word while on state visits there)
Receive a reprieve and be a pioneer.
Break new ground of a new frontier.
Wallace was radical in that he advocated eliminating previous farm debts, massive public works programs, and giving people back the dignity of their labour. This new frontier was not physical, but rather psychological. Progressive values opened up the eyes of Americans to a new possibility, a new way of doing things.
New ideas will surely get by.
Before the Depression, acquisitive individualism was the doctrine of nearly all Americans, rich or poor. They bought into the interpretation of the American Dream as the chance to “get rich quick,” regardless of who was trampled upon in the process. When that system failed them in such a dramatic way, it was eventually realised that a new idea needed to be tried.
No deed, or dividend. some may ask why?
You’ll find the solution, the answers in the sky.
This is the key passage from the song for my thesis. Wallace was known as the Great Dreamer. When asked why he tried such novel methods (and they were often controversial, such as paying farmers NOT to farm whilst some were going hungry) to help his countrymen, he would simply look off into the distance and tell them that it was America. America promised a better life for all, not a reduction to economic serfdom for most while a select elite enjoyed the benefits. America, to men like Roosevelt, Wallace, and the other New Dealers, was the land of beautiful, spacious skies and amber waves of grain, and Americans were one big family.
I know this is not a very detailed explication, and that I haven’t addressed many of the salient points involved, but it’s still worth considering. The comparisons between the 1920’s and today are frightening…Hopefully well learn a lesson from history before we go through the calamity of a second Great Depression.
References:
Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America 1929-1941 2nd ed (1995)
John C. Hyde and John Hyde. American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace (2002)
Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (1979)
The central thesis to this post will be that the song described the Great Depression in the United States, and hints at the rise of men such as Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Wallace.
Rise so high, yet so far to fall.
Obvious enough, I think. The 1920’s had been “Roaring.” From this period of unprecedented wealth and prosperity, the United States and the world plunged into the hitherto unknown poverty of the 1930’s.
A plan of dignity and balance for all.
Political breakthrough, euphoria’s high.
After it was realised that the Depression wasn’t going to end any time soon, the American electorate turned against the Hoover/Coolidge Republicans and threw their support behind the patrician from New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He campaigned on a promise to “end the tyranny of the economic royalists” and fulfill the true meaning of the American Dream – the ability to live one’s life with freedom from poverty, hunger, disease, etc. The spirit of optimism which swept the nation was unprecedented, indeed “euphoric.”
More borrowed money, more borrowed time.
Backed in a corner, caught up in the race.
Means to an end ended in disgrace.
Perspective is lost in the spirit of the chase.
This passage alludes again to the 1920’s. The prosperity of that era was built on lies. Speculators would borrow money to buy stocks not on the dividends they might pay out, but because they expected the price to raise even further, allowing them to sell again and turn a tidy profit. Many actually lost the perspective of what it meant to be responsible corporate citizens; they set out to screw both the customers and the employees in the name of making a dollar.
Foreclosure of a dream,
Those visions never seen,
Until all is lost,
Personal holocaust.
Foreclosure of a dream.
For most Americans, the Great Depression was an economic holocaust. Everything for which they had worked for generations vanished in a matter of weeks. There was no work available, no money to buy food, no land to plough, and nobody to help them…until the New Deal was ushered in.
Barren land that once filled a need,
Are worthless now, dead without a deed.
Slipping away from an iron grip,
Nature’s scales are forced to tip,
The heartland cries, loss of all pride.
The Midwestern US, long known as the breadbasket of the continent, suffered a terrible environmental calamity at the same time as the Great Depression destroyed American economic life. The great “Dust Bowl” was an extended period of drought which plagued much of the North American continent in the 1930’s. With no rainfall, water tables were quickly depleted by over-farming, and the soils became parched Great wind gusts picked up topsoil and blew it around the continent. Houses were literally buried under clouds of dirt, and thousands starved.
To leave ain’t believing, so try and be tried.
Insufficient funds, insanity and suicide.
Other victims simply left the area. So many Oklahomans migrated to California in this period that it became a legendary event in MAerican history. (Just about everything you read in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath has some basis in truth in this case.) These “Okies”, it has been argued, actually became the nucleus around which the modern, vibrant California we know today was formed.
The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no…'Read my lips
The inclusion of this speech by George HW Bush is interesting. For those who don’t remember, it was given in 1988 when Bush accepted the nomination as the Republican candidate for President. The full sound byte reads thusly: The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again. And I'll say to them: 'Read my lips -- No. New. Taxes.
It was tax money which alleviated the plight of millions of Americans in the Great Depression. During the Reagan/Bush years, government programs were assaulted and help to those who needed it cut dramatically. Tax became a dirty word, and a stigma of being soft and weak was placed on Social and Economic Democracy. (Bush ended up raising taxes after all and got beaten by Clinton in 1992 mostly because of it)
Now with new hope some will be proud.
This is no hoax, no one pushed out.
Men like Henry A. Wallace (Sec. Agriculture, 1932-40, Vice President of the United States 1940-44, Sec. of Commerce 1944-46) believed there was a better America possible than the one he had seen in the 1920’s. Prosperity did not necessarily require greed and exploitation. Instead, he was motivated by Christian principles of helping those in need, self sacrifice, and looking out for the general welfare of the community. He and other New Dealers offered hope to a nation which needed it so badly. (Wallace was actually more popular in Latin America than the US – thousands of people would hang off his every word while on state visits there)
Receive a reprieve and be a pioneer.
Break new ground of a new frontier.
Wallace was radical in that he advocated eliminating previous farm debts, massive public works programs, and giving people back the dignity of their labour. This new frontier was not physical, but rather psychological. Progressive values opened up the eyes of Americans to a new possibility, a new way of doing things.
New ideas will surely get by.
Before the Depression, acquisitive individualism was the doctrine of nearly all Americans, rich or poor. They bought into the interpretation of the American Dream as the chance to “get rich quick,” regardless of who was trampled upon in the process. When that system failed them in such a dramatic way, it was eventually realised that a new idea needed to be tried.
No deed, or dividend. some may ask why?
You’ll find the solution, the answers in the sky.
This is the key passage from the song for my thesis. Wallace was known as the Great Dreamer. When asked why he tried such novel methods (and they were often controversial, such as paying farmers NOT to farm whilst some were going hungry) to help his countrymen, he would simply look off into the distance and tell them that it was America. America promised a better life for all, not a reduction to economic serfdom for most while a select elite enjoyed the benefits. America, to men like Roosevelt, Wallace, and the other New Dealers, was the land of beautiful, spacious skies and amber waves of grain, and Americans were one big family.
I know this is not a very detailed explication, and that I haven’t addressed many of the salient points involved, but it’s still worth considering. The comparisons between the 1920’s and today are frightening…Hopefully well learn a lesson from history before we go through the calamity of a second Great Depression.
References:
Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America 1929-1941 2nd ed (1995)
John C. Hyde and John Hyde. American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace (2002)
Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (1979)
. But they do have a large fan base and they've stuck to their guns as a thrash metal band, softening up a bit, but not much. When They came back with the World Needs a Hero and The System has Failed... damn, they haven't missed a step.
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