I'm Climbing Up Those Walls Again

I've never found the wisdom of Zack de la Rocha to be uniformly appealing. There's something about spouting angry anti-establishment lyrics in every single song that begins to wear thin with time.

However, one of Rage Against The Machine's biggest hits, Bulls On Parade, started playing on my iPod recently, and a thought a bit more carefully about the lyrics and chorus, especially this part:

Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes
Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
I walk tha corner to tha rubble that used to be a library
Line up to tha mind cemetary now
What we don't know keeps tha contracts alive an movin'
They don't gotta burn tha books they just remove 'em
While arms warehouses fill as quick as tha cells
Rally round tha family, pockets full of shells

Rally round tha family! With a pocket full of shells
They rally round tha family! With a pocket full of shells
They rally round tha family! With a pocket full of shells
They rally round tha family! With a pocket full of shells

Then I read that the US is trying to build a case for anti-missile defenses aboard airlines, and we already have plenty of companies bidding for the contract to build one. I must say, some people are getting very, very rich off of the war on terror.

This isn't a great example of de la Rocha's logic; the Iraq war was. However it's good to keep an open mind and to call into question the motives behind national security from time to time, especially when so much money is being made off of it.