Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Trashed Truck

Plus, Covid-Nineteen Going on Seventeen

Today I'm going to take a break from Validation Culture post series and comment on what's going on in Canada plus an old U2 song that is strangely relevant to these current events. This blog is meant to have more emphasis on entertainment media anyway!

"Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" is part of U2's 1993 album Zooropa. Listening to just the lyrics, it appears to be about an immature, overprivileged daughter whose wealthy, enabling helicopter dad keeps bailing her out.

The immediate, literal inspiration to the song is a little more complicated — the title is a reference to old Trabant cars from communist East Germany that crashed on the side of the road as the Berlin Wall fell and they were driving out to the freedom of West Germany. In that light, it sounds like a cautionary tale — like, heads up, we have a lot of decadence and materialism over here in the West! You're going from the iron-fisted type of dystopia to another one, a Brave New World where you are not even allowed to be sad, so watch out!

But where you really get into the layers is in the videos of the live show, where lead singer Bono is performing the song in character as the devil MacPhisto. Communist imagery and old Trabant cars are part of the stage design. In the 1990s, U2 experimented a lot from their previous fare, and Bono was out to shed his sweet and earnest Live Aid image of the previous decade in favor of various ironic bad boy personas.

Apparently, a lot of Christians at the time thought this performance and the 1990s albums as a whole were very problematic. What was Bono doing, dressing up as a Satan-like figure? Was this wholesome Christian believer renouncing his faith?

Of course, this was always an example of "Depiction Is Not Endorsement." The MacPhisto character was inspired by C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters (referenced in another song's music video), a fictional depiction of the Devil's henchmen working to manipulate human beings.

When you think about it this way, and especially in light of the story of East Berlin residents driving away from totalitarianism, "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" is about an unreliable narrator trying to manipulate the subject of the song into thinking she doesn't deserve grace — trying to get her to have second thoughts about her newfound freedom. U2 have always been amazing at live performances. Watch the video, how the MacPhisto character is dripping in smirking, sneering resentment:

The theological layer is the devil lashing out and depicting God as the bad guy, giving too much grace and comfort to His children, the undeserving sinners.

The social layer is a commentary on the totalitarian mindset that freedom is bad for ordinary people, who need to be treated like irresponsible, incompetent, wayward children who ought to be punished or financially ruined or "held accountable" for their attempts at independence.

Now, I have mixed feelings on the initial premise of the Freedom Convoy trucker protests — I don't think vaccine mandates justified blocking the border crossings, which are economically fragile and few and far between — but Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's cartoon villain seizure of "emergency" powers and the debanking of non-violent dissidents (especially after the border crossings were already cleared) crosses the line into actual totalitarianism, and vindicates the need for these protests after all. The Trudeau administration and law enforcement have been clear that over the next few months, they intend to financially ruin people who were part of the non-violent street protests, people who donated small amounts of money to the movement, and people with the "wrong" political views at all.

It has been disturbing seeing progressive neoliberal Twitter openly cheering for what is effectively a social credit system on the basis of political views. Too many people believe that basic economic participation in society is a privilege to be revoked for expressing the "wrong" opinions or supporting the "wrong" causes, even if those opinions are actually within the mainstream. This is not just about stigmatizing conservatives, moderates, and libertarians — this is an attack on anyone's choice to make up their own minds on the issues and which causes to support. This is an attack on free will and the independent human spirit. Like, if I end up supporting the "good" causes and candidates anyway, I want it to be my own decision, and not because I was economically coerced, Stepford Wife'd, and pod-person'd into it! Even if you are the enmeshed Golden Child and not the stigmatized Scapegoat of a dysfunctional political family... you are still part of a dysfunctional political family — and if you have ever seen John Carpenter's The Thing, enmeshment is its own form of horror.

This is what I believe to be the true meaning of the Mark of the Beast in the Book of Revelation. It is not a conspiracy involving a literal injection as some anti-vaxxers now propose. It is about psychologically internalizing and identifying with a totalitarian, strongman authority that demands personally invasive and absolute obedience in order to survive and participate in society. The idea that your standing in the economy is the same as who you are as a person.

Hopefully the authoritarians will eventually change their tune and get all salty like MacPhisto — because the emergency powers and financial abuse get dropped altogether, or Canadian dissidents will find their way around the system with the potential for decentralized finance and privately held cryptocurrency, or be able to find refuge in a free country like the drivers leaving East Germany after the Berlin Wall's end.

Ideally, here in the United States, we will take heed and repeal or scale back the Patriot Act and civil asset forfeiture as well — the legal authority is already there to debank our own citizens without due process. But earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security expanded the scope of "terrorism" to include "false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions" which, as we have seen in practice by now, simply means having a difference in opinion.

And it case it needs to be said — there is no practical purpose at this point for continuing or establishing new mandates, or punishing vaccine refusers. The COVID-19 vaccines — which have been available for about a year now — are amazing for personal protection against severe disease, but leaky at preventing transmission. The game-changing Omicron variant, which is falling in case numbers as it is, is less dangerous and less of a strain on hospitals, and more likely to cause breakthrough infection in vaccinated people — in fact, it was spread internationally by vaccinated and compliant travelers. Again, there is nothing useful to gain from using government powers to harass the unvaccinated — just delayed emotional venting and ritual scapegoating. Authoritarian governments know this — and the ritual scapegoating is on purpose.

In order to get a free population to submit to digital surveillance and a fascistic public-private social credit system, they have to be persuaded that they need it. Part of it is the willingness of "good people" to take a hit to their own privacy and civil liberties in order for the "bad people" to be even further punished. Another part of it is where "good people" feel inherently vulnerable, and take on a mindset of dependence on a strongman to save them from "bad people" and freedom itself. Yet another aspect is being disconnected from reality, and taking the "right" kind of people at their word rather than relying on plainly observable evidence. Trudeau's supporters have claimed that the protesters themselves are secret fascists, and that their complaints against government policy are a threat to democracy. But the anti-mandate protesters are not the ones demanding for the rights of others to be taken away, or trying to prevent their fellow citizens from participating in political life. This is classic projection — Trudeau and his supporters are the ones openly displaying actual fascistic and anti-democratic behavior. Plain, unfiltered, common-sense observation shows this. Totalitarianism is a dance that takes two — both the dictator, and a population that capitulates in large enough numbers to crush minority dissent.

For another song with similar energy as "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car," check out "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" from The Sound of Music (1964):

When I was a kid watching the movie, I always thought, "Huh, that's an unintentionally creepy love song, of course they were casually sexist back in the olden days like that, this song hasn't aged well at all."

But as an adult watching it again, the creepiness is obviously intentional. The patronizing boyfriend, Rolfe, persuades his girlfriend Liesl that: bad characters are out to get her, she is a naïve and vulnerable blank slate to manipulation, she needs someone telling her what to do (himself), and his authoritarianism is benevolent ("I'll take care of you"). Rolfe presents a nice and orderly image to hide the fact that he is the bad boy she should watch out for. People persuaded into a "timid and shy and scared" mindset are more likely to accept totalitarianism. Even if this foreshadowing wasn't initially obvious to the original early sixties audience, then for sure the condescending boyfriend's later Nazi reveal was an "Aha" moment.

Even in the United States, corporate-driven propaganda tries to persuade audiences into the authoritarian song and dance. It claims that valuing freedom is at odds with social justice — that it is either privileged selfishness or naïve false consciousness or some combination of both, depending on your race and gender. It claims that mob action is justified or due process needs to be selectively ignored in order to save the "good" people from hypothetical right-wing bogeymen (even if the targets are, in practice, other leftists). The Washington Post has claimed that being entitled to freedom is white supremacy. Corporate and educational training materials from Tema Okun and Robin DiAngelo claim that psychological independence, desire for personal privacy and boundaries ("defensiveness"), not being particularly agreeable, or simply wanting to be left alone, are all aspects of "white supremacy culture" or "white fragility." (Notwithstanding badly written and over-broad legislation that hamstrings the teaching of actual history or prevents reasonable discussion, this is what the majority of people are complaining about when they complain about Critical Theory in K-12 schools. It is trying to make kids turn off the part of their brain that trusts their own judgment and doesn't let authority figures into their personal life very easily.)

Anyway. It's kind of shocking how fast this all happened in Canada. Hopefully it is not too late for dissenters in Parliament to undo the new social credit system and go back to normal. Justin Trudeau had a nice wholesome image and then revealed himself to be a power-hungry cartoon villain, like Prince Hans in Frozen.

Part of living through an authoritarian movement is being bombarded with voices from ostensibly good people that claim you can't handle personal freedom and don't deserve it. You just have to recognize these unreliable narrators for who they are.