I seem to recall something about a wall up yonder in the North...
The song touches on first principles. The song is effective precisely because they're so self-evident as to normally escape our attention. I humbly submit to you, Qvist, that your line of reasoning ("That's all very nice, Billy, but there's a little thing called reality you may want to watch out for...") is exactly what Bragg wants to start. It's the same line of reasoning Morrissey tries to initiate with ""Meat Is Murder". Both songs force you to rehearse the reasons for going to war, or for eating meat, thereby-- so the hope might be-- forcing a change in perspective. Evidently you've followed your own chain of reasoning and reached the same conclusions, which is fine. But (and this is my only point here) I don't think that makes "Between The Wars" silly or stupid.
I agree, but neither is your explanation. That's because we both know there's no point in rehashing, step by step, what caused the two World Wars. I will stand by the assertion that if you go back far enough in any conflict you are going to find elites squabbling over power and money. The origins of World War I are complex, it's true, but the war's byzantine complexity is a key to understanding why the war had so little to do with the common man, i.e. Mr. Bragg's mythologized factory worker. When you say this...
...I think you are agreeing with me. You're just implying that my position is naive and unrooted in reality. Which may in fact be true.
But, again, the important thing is to revisit the basic questions: why do we fight wars? Who leads the charge? Who does the dying? Who benefits? What are the conflicts really about? There is something naive about saying "Let's tear down the walls and live by faith in our fellow man", yes, but there's an equal amount of cynicism in saying "That's just the way it's always been". I appreciate songwriters like Bragg and Morrissey who nudge us to look at familiar subjects in a new way.
I happen to agree that the argument for appeasement was a bad one, and there's no doubt the fight against the Axis powers in World War II was fully justified. From your post above you have either read George Orwell's essays from the Thirties and early Forties or you are doing a fine job channeling him. Either way, I think there's room for a point of view which might lead us to look at the situation differently and explore the roots of the conflict. Sure, Hitler's rise to power was based on a confluence of factors, not any one reason, but unquestionably the depressed German economy played a major role, as did the disarray of the German left. The Nazis began as a small minority and rose to power exploiting the weakness of the state.
We're seeing this in the United States right now. Look at the recent fight over the debt ceiling, which very nearly caused a catastrophic default. There is a direct correlation between the bad economy and a minority of elected representatives who are dictating the governance of the entire nation. A minority pushed a majority to the brink. There are multiple reasons for why that happened, but ultimately it comes down to, yes, elites fighting elites for money and power.
Mythology, politicization, crudeness...let's not forget we are addressing these matters in the context of art. I don't expect Billy Bragg or Morrissey to give me an accurate, book-length dissertation on the causes of war. I expect their positions to be crude, even childlike. Those positions have immense value when we find ourselves too embedded in the dominant ideology of our time. There are always good reasons to go to war. There were good reasons to invade Iraq, good reasons to invade Afghanistan, good reasons to conduct drone strikes in Yemen, good reasons to open black sites around the globe,
sound reasons to torture people,
excellent reasons to kill U.S. citizens without a trial...
Not accusing you of herd-think, Qvist, just illustrating that a topic is sometimes best viewed in all its full complexity, and sometimes it helps to stand apart for a moment and re-evaluate its basic premises and assumptions.