Music and Politics

"mother told me to be something
so i'm afraid"
-m. good, "failing the rorschasch test"

That's one of my all-time favourite lyrics and it's from Matt Good's song "Failing the Rorschasch Test," always good for a listen. Besides, it's such a fucking cool title. ""Failing the..." Fuck, that's a good title. It's such a good title the song could be mediocre and it wouldn't really matter, it'd still be mix-potential. But no. The song, too, is all that.

Matthew Good is a Vancouver boy done good. He's a damn fine rock musician who writes some of the finer lyrics around. Guitars are the driving force behind their rock. Matt also runs one of the finest blogs in Canada (he and I have so damned much in common).

He posted a link to a fantastic article on the attrocities in Sudan. Attrocities? Genocide. Who the fuck sits around and gets all semantic on whether or not X amount of deaths classifies as a genocide? And how did that go, anyhow? Something like:

"No, no, I'm sorry, but 'genocide' is not the correct term. No, we prefer 'widespread slayings and senseless acts of killing'. 'Genocide' would imply that, oh, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of people are dying."

Now, don't freak out, but yeah, that's pretty much the case. The conservative estimates say 200,000. Others say 400,000. The real cynics say it's only 400,000 if you add in all the deaths from diseases (which could have been dramatically lower with Western intervention). And we're doing what about this?

Absolutely sweet fuck all. Me, I think the Western world's of the "Africa? Fuck Africa. That's the dark continent. Bad shit happens there. Always has. Poor fuckers. We'd like to help 'em, but really, they can't even help 'emselves" kind of mindset.

It's really disgusting. And nobody talks about it. Nobody makes an effort. Africa is being ravaged by drought, AIDS, and political strife, not to mention that small matter of genocide, and the world stands back and does nothing. We could do so damned much. People need to talk about this.

Matt's blog is listed under Brilliant Canucks (because a spade is a spade) on the sidebar, Matthew Good's mBlog.